Looking for other female gamers
Lise Mendel
I'm dedicating part of my web page to women gamers. Please take a look
and tell me what you think!
Thanks.
URL http://www.access.digex.net/~catalyst/WIG/index.html
Lise Mendel
http://www.access.digex.net/~catalyst/
Marshman
Lise Mendel <cata...@access.digex.net> wrote:
>Thanks.
>URL http://www.access.digex.net/~catalyst/WIG/index.html
>Lise Mendel
>http://www.access.digex.net/~catalyst/
This is blatantly sexist and prejudiced.
What about a page dedicated to male gamers?
To African-American Gamers?
To European Gamers?
To Indian Gamers?
To Slav Gamers?
To Celtic Gamers?
To Homosexual Gamers?
To Disabled Gamers?
To Furry Friends of the North Gamers?
To Extra-Terrestrial Gamers?
To Canadian Gamers?
To Child Gamers?
To Baby Gamers?
To Gamers with Hyper-Dyslexia?
? aixelsyD-repyH htiw sremaG oT
? sremaG naitsirhC oT
Whoops...
You can see my point. You're very obviously sexist, prejudiced, and
evil as stated before. You will be struck before the hand of the
righteous and the fiery truth of correctedness and people who are
right.
If you are taking this seriously: GET A LIFE.
Nonetheless, this is a serious statement about all the politically
correct crap we have to deal with. In short, IT SUCKS! Get your
women gamer crap OUTTA' HERE!
grim...@iastate.edu
In article <4n6780$5...@nntp.interaccess.com>,
Marshman <b...@interaccess.com> wrote:
[much pointless crap deleted]
>Nonetheless, this is a serious statement about all the politically
>correct crap we have to deal with. In short, IT SUCKS! Get your
>women gamer crap OUTTA' HERE!
Feh. Your attitude is the one which "SUCKS". More women in gaming can
only improve the hobby. Some of the finest, most creative, most
_intelligent_ gamers I know have been women. Don't let a chromosome
fog your thinking. Well, more than it already has. More people gaming,
more people know what gaming is, as opposed to what the the
bible-thumpers would have the unknowing believe.
More "women gamer crap", please...this long-time gamer would much
appreciate it.
grim
--
Likes: Indigo Girls. Spider Robinson, RPGs, |"Just me,| grim...@iastate.edu
Babylon 5, Peter David, good SF, good | my Muse,| All rights reserved.
people, a better world for everyone. | and I." | Copyright 1996.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
List wrangler, "Dark Designs"|I don't speak for ISU, ISU doesn't for me.
Marshman
grim...@iastate.edu () wrote:
>In article <4n6780$5...@nntp.interaccess.com>,
>Marshman <b...@interaccess.com> wrote:
>[much pointless crap deleted]
>>Nonetheless, this is a serious statement about all the politically
>>correct crap we have to deal with. In short, IT SUCKS! Get your
>>women gamer crap OUTTA' HERE!
>Feh. Your attitude is the one which "SUCKS". More women in gaming can
>only improve the hobby. Some of the finest, most creative, most
>_intelligent_ gamers I know have been women. Don't let a chromosome
>fog your thinking. Well, more than it already has. More people gaming,
>more people know what gaming is, as opposed to what the the
>bible-thumpers would have the unknowing believe.
>More "women gamer crap", please...this long-time gamer would much
>appreciate it.
>grim
You've seen to mistaken my intent here. I too have a lot of friends
who are women and are gamers as well. Hell - my best friend is a girl
(I'm only 17) who is a gamer. I'm not by any means saying that women
shouldn't participate in gaming. This would be stupid for they a rich
source that has siginificantly bettered any gaming activity I have
been witness to.
So... what am I saying? What I'm saying is that I hate the
polictically correct atmosphere that I'm growing up in. I detest it.
Why must there be a special interest group for everything? Why must
everything that women do be noted as if it is a miracle in the making?
I've done my research here. Most people, when they see something such
as a "Women gamer's page" then tend to view women seperately and
stererotype them as distinct from the male gamers. If you have an
ounce of wit about you, you know this is bad; it reverses years and
years of work which people like my mother have put in to eliminate
stereotypes in society! This is why I say, get your women gamer crap
OUTTA' HERE!!! Why not just show gif images of women gaming? What's
wrong with this? Or articles writen by women? This would be far more
appropriate in my mind. I do not need a neon light to tell that women
are gaming, and putting up a page dedicated to women gamers will most
certainly not go any distance in eliminating prejudice or making women
known in gaming. And anyways, the people who do not know such things
(that women are equal/good for gaming) won't begin to understand them
just because of a women's gamer page.
Chris Camfield
>
>>I'm dedicating part of my web page to women gamers. Please take a look
>>and tell me what you think!
>
>>Thanks.
>>URL http://www.access.digex.net/~catalyst/WIG/index.html
>
>>Lise Mendel
>>http://www.access.digex.net/~catalyst/
>
>This is blatantly sexist and prejudiced.
>If you are taking this seriously: GET A LIFE.
>correct crap we have to deal with. In short, IT SUCKS! Get your
>women gamer crap OUTTA' HERE!
Who says that Lise's effort is PC motivated? It isn't. I've just
gone and read what she set up. You obviously haven't done the same.
How many female gamers are there? D*mn few that I can see. How does
that affect public perception of roleplaying? How does it affect those
gamers who ARE female? How does it affect the industry? (How many
good ideas for games and campaigns are we missing out on because of the
lack of participation by women?)
I think it was in a Space Gamer from the mid-80s that had a letter(?)
about a male GM who, in the first session of a new female player, had
her endowed with larger breasts, raped and impregnated. Nice, huh?
Naturally, she didn't return to the game.
Lise's intro article seems to imply that sexism in gaming has
dwindled. I was infuriated last fall to find out that a couple of
women interested in LARPs were driven from their first meeting of our
campus gaming club by stupid, sexist comments. And now, of course,
we have Marshman's knee-jerk reactionary response.
>To Canadian Gamers?
If it allowed me to have more contact with other gamers in Canada or my
area, if it got me in touch with a GM with a great idea for a campaign
that I would enjoy, why the HELL not?
Chris
PS Lise, I guess you have the first rant about your page. :-)
--
Christopher Camfield - ccam...@uwaterloo.ca - 1996 BMath Joint CS/C&O
"Do you need a new invention? Are you in the right dimension?"
(The Jazz Butcher)
Joseph M. Saul
I think what she's doing is great. She's not advocating separatism,
she's just providing a forum for women gamers to communicate with each
other, and suggesting that they should bring their concerns to the
attention of game companies. Fair enough: there *are* less women in
gaming, and their interests *are* traditionally ignored.
The only real danger is if people start thinking of "female gamers" as a
monolithic group. They aren't, but they do have some concerns in common,
and I think that's what the W.I.G. page is about.
Joe Saul
jms...@umich.edu
Scott Padget
ccam...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Chris Camfield) wrote:
>In article <4n6780$5...@nntp.interaccess.com>,
>Marshman <b...@interaccess.com> wrote:
>>Lise Mendel <cata...@access.digex.net> wrote:
>>
>>>I'm dedicating part of my web page to women gamers. Please take a look
>>>and tell me what you think!
>>
>>
>>This is blatantly sexist and prejudiced.
>[chop]
>>If you are taking this seriously: GET A LIFE.
>>Nonetheless, this is a serious statement about all the politically
>>correct crap we have to deal with. In short, IT SUCKS! Get your
>>women gamer crap OUTTA' HERE!
>
>Who says that Lise's effort is PC motivated? It isn't. I've just
>gone and read what she set up. You obviously haven't done the same.
Just had to toss in my 2 cent's worth here. While the tone of Marshman's post was certainly over the top, I understand his point. =
The intent (PC or otherwise) of Lise's efforts is not IMO really the issue, nor is the proliferation of special-interest groups. So=
me special-interest groups are constructive and useful; others tend to reinforce the very differences which the group is presumably =
attempting to combat. I believe Marshman was trying to tell us that Lise's page falls in the latter category--that the very act of =
identifying "Women Gamers" as a special interest group will tend to set them apart, with undesirable effects.
I have a rule of thumb I use when trying to establish whether a given group appears constructive or merely PC (note that I am judgin=
g *appearances* with this rule, not Truth): Would the existence of a similar group be offensive to many people if an opposite-but-c=
omplementary special interest was served?
Examples: (Note that these are only examples and do not necessarily reflect my political views; nor are they intended to make any ki=
nd of statement regarding the actual/desirable demographics of any group, occupation, etc. If anyone reads any deep meaning into th=
ese examples, they are obviously far too involved in interest-group political activism.)
A group to advance the causes of female bricklayers: Would it be acceptable to create a group advancing the special interests of ma=
le secretaries?
A scholarship fund dedicated to Native American engineering students: How about a scholarship solely for WASP fine arts students?
A public housing project with a quota system guaranteeing a minimum percentage of gay residents: What would the reaction be to a qu=
ota system guaranteeing a certain percentage of straight residents?
IMO each of these special interests fails my test because a substantial fraction of women, Native Americans, and gays might be offen=
ded by the "flip-side" special interest.
>>To Canadian Gamers?
>
>If it allowed me to have more contact with other gamers in Canada or my
>area, if it got me in touch with a GM with a great idea for a campaign
>that I would enjoy, why the HELL not?
>
<snip>
IMO this is an example of a potentially useful and constructive special interest. Look at an alternative: A Web page devoted to ga=
mers in Illinois. I can't imagine many Canadians getting upset by this (it includes/excludes on the basis of geography, which tends=
to be a limiting factor in gaming groups anyway).
Scott Padget
(down periscope; descend to "lurk" depth)
Bruce Baugh
>This is blatantly sexist and prejudiced.
Whatever happened to being able to mind your own business? I think the
original poster's idea is just like all the laundry list of red herrings
you posted - if there's interest, all of those should exist, too. People
should be free to associate with others with whom they feel a shared
interest, background, or experience, and those of you with the
paternalistic urge to tell everyone else how to live their lives should
leave well enough alone.
Bruce Baugh <*> br...@aracnet.com <*> http://www.aracnet.com/~bruce
See my Web pages for
New science fiction by Steve Stirling and George Alec Effing er
Christlib, the mailing list for Christian and libertarian concerns
Daedalus Games, makers of Shadowfist and Feng Shui
Chris Goodwin
>If you are taking this seriously: GET A LIFE.
>Nonetheless, this is a serious statement about all the politically
>correct crap we have to deal with. In short, IT SUCKS! Get your
>women gamer crap OUTTA' HERE!
Dude, chill a bit. Start your own web page. Devote it to Left-handed Blond
Croatian Gamers. Sheesh.
--
arc...@peak.org <*> http://www.peak.org/~archer
Listkeeper: Libertarian Fiction (libfic-l) mailing list
and Jack Chalker (chalker-l) mailing list. E-mail for details.
Oceania: A New Country In Development <*> http://oceania.org
grim...@iastate.edu
In article <4n779m$a...@nntp.interaccess.com>,
Marshman <b...@interaccess.com> wrote:
[snip]
>So... what am I saying? What I'm saying is that I hate the
>polictically correct atmosphere that I'm growing up in. I detest it.
Then let's chalk this up to poor target aquisition, and move on.
>Why must there be a special interest group for everything?
Because there's enough interest out there for a special interest group?
>Why must everything that women do be noted as if it is a
>miracle in the making?
*shrug* I don't see what that has to do with the web page announcement.
It certainly wasn't advertised with such fanfare.
>I've done my research here. Most people, when they see something such
>as a "Women gamer's page" then tend to view women seperately and
>stererotype them as distinct from the male gamers. If you have an
>ounce of wit about you, you know this is bad; it reverses years and
>years of work which people like my mother have put in to eliminate
>stereotypes in society!
So...shouting down a woman who makes a brief announcement about a web
page for women gamers (gaming being traditionally male-dominated)
advances the cause of equal rights??
> This is why I say, get your women gamer crap
>OUTTA' HERE!!! Why not just show gif images of women gaming? What's
>wrong with this? Or articles writen by women?
*shrug* Why not let women _choose_ their form of expression freely
instead of trying to exercise a heckler's veto?
Or is this too dangerous?
>I do not need a neon light to tell that women
>are gaming, and putting up a page dedicated to women gamers will most
>certainly not go any distance in eliminating prejudice or making women
>known in gaming.
On this we agree. Change comes from within, rather than without.
Having said that, though, doesn't make a women gamers' home page any less
valid.
Just don't look at the page and think enlightened thoughts, or
somethin'?
> And anyways, the people who do not know such things
>(that women are equal/good for gaming) won't begin to understand them
>just because of a women's gamer page.
No, but hey, the people you weren't going to to enlighten anyway should
be the least of your problems. It's primarily for women who game...if
it bothers you that much, put up one for male gamers, or all gamers.
I think her goal, and the manner she has set about it so far is a noble
one. Your explanations have not convinced me otherwise.
Mr. Tines
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
On Mon, 13 May 1996 02:35:05 GMT, in <4n6780$5...@nntp.interaccess.com>
b...@interaccess.com (Marshman) wrote.....
[blather snipped w/extreme prejudice]
And people still wonder why there are so few women in this hobby, when we
have such wonderful examples of reasons why not.
*sigh*
- --#!/bin/perl -s-- -HAVE *YOU* EXPORTED A CRYPTO SYSTEM TODAY? -RSA in PERL
_______ $m=unpack(H.$w,$m."\0"x$w),$_=`echo "16do$w 2+4Oi0$d*-
/_ __(_)__ ___ ___ ^1[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*La1=z\U$n%0]SX$k"[$m*]\EszlXx++p|dc
/ / / / _ \/ -_|_-< `,s/^.|\W//g,print pack('H*',$_)while read(STDIN,$m,
/_/ /_/_//_/\__/___/@windsong.demon.co.uk ($w=2*$d-1+length($n)&~1)/2)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6ui/v.byte3/cp850
iQCVAwUBMZbZWIoUd45Z7dNFAQHrxgQAhjnaswZGVhJ6zT+r6NdS0LeBIUXBQ73Y
DzeUgOtOMomp82WY60rfmU6AfH5T2HAbcMMnYLV63GLX+mBg8nIak3wu4zSG/Z+z
THBx0YSSVs8XUUAXYrnpR41ndrtt9igddWl7ymqdFRORotYNHrv/QjBDZ5v4OY/4
tJjeydxG8Ms=
=cn7o
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Marshman
br...@aracnet.com (Bruce Baugh) wrote:
>In article <4n6780$5...@nntp.interaccess.com>, b...@interaccess.com (Marshman) wrote:
>>This is blatantly sexist and prejudiced.
>Whatever happened to being able to mind your own business? I think the
>original poster's idea is just like all the laundry list of red herrings
>you posted - if there's interest, all of those should exist, too. People
>should be free to associate with others with whom they feel a shared
>interest, background, or experience, and those of you with the
>paternalistic urge to tell everyone else how to live their lives should
>leave well enough alone.
Once again, you misunderstand the point I'm making. I'm not telling
anyone what to do, nor would I even broach that idea. I possess a
firm belief in the idea that people should do as they please and have
the liberty to do so, within boundaries of course (Ie., don't harm
others, etc.)
Nonetheless, I'm just expressing my opinion. That is certainly not a
paternalistic concept. Sure, the Klan can congregate, as can other
"groups with interest", but people speak against them because they see
that "groups" motive in a negative way. That is what I am precisely
doing - speaking out against this idea because I do not see the value
in it.
IF you did research on the subject, and looked at society, it becomes
evident that special interest groups, and groups which starchly
distinguish themselves from the rest of society, do nothing but divide
society more than is needed. This simply creates the concept that
"female gamers" are different than other gamers. Yet what is needed
in this friggin' world isn't people feeling seperate from each other.
What is needed is this: For people to view each other as human beings
above all else; regardless of sex, race, creed, and the like. When
concepts born out of a climate fogged with an insane sense of PC like
"female" groups and "male" groups rear their ugly head, then people do
not acheive this sense of belonging to one greater group. This is not
good, in simple terms.
Realize that I am not against female gamers. I've stated this OVER
AND OVER, yet people are confusing this point.
Marshman
"Mr. Tines" <ti...@windsong.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>On Mon, 13 May 1996 02:35:05 GMT, in <4n6780$5...@nntp.interaccess.com>
> b...@interaccess.com (Marshman) wrote.....
>[blather snipped w/extreme prejudice]
>And people still wonder why there are so few women in this hobby, when we
>have such wonderful examples of reasons why not.
Read the post before this.
I AM NOT AGAINST FEMALE GAMERS.
Look at what I have said in the last two posts. If you still think
that I'm against them, please let me know.
Anne B. Nonie Rider
b...@interaccess.com (Marshman) wrote:
> This simply creates the concept that
> "female gamers" are different than other gamers.
Your point being? By and large, we ARE different from
male gamers, for whatever reason of nature or nurture.
If we choose to associate with each other, is it any
particular business of yours? If we find the exceptions
like Sarah Kahn intriguing, rather than invisible, does
that cause you harm?
I presume you're primarily trolling for your own
amusement, like many others who've expressed similar
sentiments in the past. But if you really are concerned
about creating an egalitarian world, clean up your
own backyard rather than telling a minority that they
shouldn't like the company of their own kind.
--Nonie
Karen J. Cravens
In article <4n7qgg$g...@lastactionhero.rs.itd.umich.edu>,
Joseph M. Saul <jms...@us.itd.umich.edu> wrote:
>The only real danger is if people start thinking of "female gamers" as a
>monolithic group. They aren't, but they do have some concerns in common,
>and I think that's what the W.I.G. page is about.
Therein lies the problem for me... I felt no inclination to go look
because I don't think of myself as a "female gamer," but as a gamer
who happens to be female... I've yet to find any other female gamer
with whom I have anything more in common than J. Random Male Gamer.
Then again, having had a heavily math/engineering/computer-oriented
scholastic career, I consider myself "one of the guys" in most
regards.
Silver
--........................................................................
Phoenyx Roleplaying Listserver - majo...@phoenyx.southwind.net
Home of westwind-l, Furry Swords & Sorcery PBeM RPG
..........................................................................
Steven B. Fellows
I have not had a chance to look at Lisa's page. But I agree with the poster,
who said that it is clearly apparent why there are so few women playing
when you have kneejerk responses.
Most of the complaints that I have heard from women about gaming include:
1) No other women playing in the game.
2) The other players behave like pigs.
3) The games are always voilent, noone thinks through problems.
4) I am not interested in the guns, and would like to learn more about
*insert spells, plot, character development, etc.*
5) Some guys constantly tellingme what to do, or trying to coach me when
I don't want to be coached.
These complaints also come from a lot of other guys, but a lot of them stem
from the fact that these are women trying to play in a game dominated by men.
If something can be done to attract more women to the game, then that is great.
I think a page like Lisa is setting up (reminder, I have not seen it yet).
would be great if it addresses these issues: treat women as people and not
as objects.
Hey, it just makes it a more fun social occasion.
-Steve
sfel...@netcom.com
Makoto Tony Kobayashi
>who are women and are gamers as well. Hell - my best friend is a girl
Side note: does anyone else think this sounds like "I'm not racist --
some of my closest friends are Black..."?
[snip]
>So... what am I saying? What I'm saying is that I hate the
>polictically correct atmosphere that I'm growing up in. I detest it.
>Why must there be a special interest group for everything? Why must
>everything that women do be noted as if it is a miracle in the making?
>I've done my research here. Most people, when they see something such
>as a "Women gamer's page" then tend to view women seperately and
[snip]
Okay, I can understand the frustration. Political correctness can be
a pretty oppressive atmosphere for anyone White, heterosexual, or
male. (And if you happen to be all three, you've just got the triple
whammy.) But consider this: the atmosphere that you detest so much is
similar to what some women feel in some gaming situations.
The other frustration that you feel is that a "Women gamer's page"
needlessly segregates the gaming community. It might if Lise had
created a "Let's start our own gaming club and ban all boys" kind of
page, but she didn't. She just wants to encourage women to game.
Right at the top, Lise writes,
Gaming Needs Women!
And in her second paragraph, she writes:
"This page is not meant to imply that the majority of male gamers are
sexist, harassing, condescending goons. If they were, I would have
quit the hobby years ago. Most of them would like to have more..."
If you don't want more women gaming, then don't read the page. But if
you are interested in encouraging women to game, it might be a good
idea to read the page and hear what Lise has to say.
If this were a perfect world, then there would be no need for such a
page. There would be no need to specifically encourage women to game.
As is, I think there *are* some problems -- problems that some gamers
face simply because they are women. Ask your best friend if she has
ever felt uncomfortable gaming. Perhaps she hasn't. But many women
have. That's not an attack on you or me, but just something that is.
The more pages like Lise's that we read, the better we can understand
those problems, and the more we can do to fix them.
Mach
--
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/spider/makoto/home.html ,-----------------------.
,------------------. ,----------------------' ###' / `### |
| Makoto Kobayashi | | See homepage section ##( /)/) )## hp48 |
| mak...@cs.ubc.ca | | Random_SigFile_Topic ###. / ,### |
Lise Mendel
ccam...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (Chris Camfield) wrote:
>In article <4n6780$5...@nntp.interaccess.com>,
>>Lise Mendel <cata...@access.digex.net> wrote:
>>
>>>I'm dedicating part of my web page to women gamers. Please take a look and tell me what you think!
>>
>>This is blatantly sexist and prejudiced.
>[chop]
>>If you are taking this seriously: GET A LIFE.
>>Nonetheless, this is a serious statement about all the politically
>>correct crap we have to deal with. In short, IT SUCKS! Get your
>>women gamer crap OUTTA' HERE!
>
Sounds like you're taking yourself WAY too seriously, guy. Feeling a bit self conscious?
>Who says that Lise's effort is PC motivated? It isn't. I've just
>gone and read what she set up. You obviously haven't done the same.
>
>How many female gamers are there? D*mn few that I can see. How does
>that affect public perception of roleplaying? How does it affect those
>gamers who ARE female? How does it affect the industry? (How many
>good ideas for games and campaigns are we missing out on because of the
>lack of participation by women?)
>
>I think it was in a Space Gamer from the mid-80s that had a letter(?)
>about a male GM who, in the first session of a new female player, had
>her endowed with larger breasts, raped and impregnated. Nice, huh?
>Naturally, she didn't return to the game.
>
>Lise's intro article seems to imply that sexism in gaming has
>dwindled. I was infuriated last fall to find out that a couple of
>women interested in LARPs were driven from their first meeting of our
>campus gaming club by stupid, sexist comments. And now, of course,
>we have Marshman's knee-jerk reactionary response.
>
>>To Canadian Gamers?
>
>If it allowed me to have more contact with other gamers in Canada or my
>area, if it got me in touch with a GM with a great idea for a campaign
>that I would enjoy, why the HELL not?
>
>Chris
>
>PS Lise, I guess you have the first rant about your page. :-)
I only wish I could locate Marshman's original post (dejanews doesn't even seem to have it)... This snippet will be put on the page, though. :-)
Lise Mendel
Mommy to Abigail (5/9/93) and Dorothy (10/19/95)
http://www.access.digex.net/~catalyst/
Lise Mendel
pho...@southwind.net (Karen J. Cravens) wrote:
>In article <4n7qgg$g...@lastactionhero.rs.itd.umich.edu>,
>Joseph M. Saul <jms...@us.itd.umich.edu> wrote:
>>The only real danger is if people start thinking of "female gamers" as a
>>monolithic group. They aren't, but they do have some concerns in common,
>>and I think that's what the W.I.G. page is about.
>
>Therein lies the problem for me... I felt no inclination to go look
>because I don't think of myself as a "female gamer," but as a gamer
>who happens to be female... I've yet to find any other female gamer
>with whom I have anything more in common than J. Random Male Gamer.
Good to hear it. I'm glad you've been able to game in an environment where
you weren't constantly forced to represent all women, and that you've never
had a new member of the group blatently treat you as though he thought you
were only there because you were someone's (usually the GMs) girlfriend.
Or have a gamer dedicate himself you to 'teaching' you the rules you've
been playing for 10 years... Just out of curiosity, when did you start to
game? I've been doing it since '77...
>
>Then again, having had a heavily math/engineering/computer-oriented
>scholastic career, I consider myself "one of the guys" in most
>regards.
>
Me too. That didn't stop a certain GM at GenCon from deciding he'd try to
see if he could get me to raise my tournament score and lower my Rice
Purity score (yes, it was this crude).
Haven't had this kind of shit happening lately, but I'm not 14 anymore and
don't intimidate easily :-)
If this isn't going on any more, that's great! That's one of the things
I'm trying to find out.
Tonia Walden
>If you are taking this seriously: GET A LIFE.
>Nonetheless, this is a serious statement about all the politically
>correct crap we have to deal with. In short, IT SUCKS! Get your
>women gamer crap OUTTA' HERE!
Hmmm - You realise you are advocating censorship - funny from a person
who supposedly has a problem with political correctness.
Tonia
G Benage
In article <Dr19r...@ritz.mordor.com>, ma...@ritz.mordor.com
(matth) writes:
>2. A science fiction game that combines these features:
> 1. Cyberpunk technology while making the attitude that comes with
> it optional.
Keep an eye out for Blue Planet, a new hard science-fiction RPG from
BioHazard Games. The human race has entered a new phase of
"artificial evolution" with the development of cybernetic technology and
sophisticated genetic engineering.
The setting is definitely a "dark future" one: a genetically engineered
virus ravaged the Earth's agricultural crops and led to a three decade-
long Blight during which billions of people died and the social,
political,
economic, and ecological stability of the planet was devastated. However,
the focus of the setting is not Earth, but the single habitable world that
humanity has successfully colonized in another star system--the
waterworld, Poseidon. The game's theme is therefore not the typical
"urban-punk" thing you get in the cyber-genre. Instead, it centers on
humanity's first encounter with a truly alien and mysterious world.
> 2. Aliens, and a way to make them nonhuman or having no features
> of known earth creatures.
I think you're gonna like some of the surprises hidden below Poseidon's
surface... <grin>
>5. Any game with a generic combat system that does not depend on
>rounds but a single stream of combat.
We've retained "Action Rounds" as an effective way of organizing book-
keeping and managing the "bandwidth" problem for GMs. However,
character actions within this system aren't reduced to the staccato, stop-
action "I go, you go" sequence of traditional RPG mechanics. Combat is
a lot more flowing, uncertain, and chaotic...in short, it's more
realistic,
exciting, and fun!
I love to talk about Blue Planet, but I'd better give it a rest before I'm
accused of spamming the newsgroup! ;-) Once we get the Web page up
and running, we'll have lots of cool Blue Planet stuff available, like
character
profiles, background info, short fiction, artwork and graphics, and a lot
more. We're giving ourselves until January 1, 1997 to put the game on
the shelves. We'll do everything we can to get BP out this fall, but
we're
going to make sure it's *perfect* before we ask you to buy it.
Good Gaming,
Greg Benage
BioHazard Games
Lee Gold
I've heard accounts from girls/women of boys/men trying
to intimidate them into dropping out of gaming by
gangraping their female PCs -- or criticizing their
male PCs as wimps if _they_ didn't happily participate
in a gangrape.
I've never run across this sort of thing personally.
When I sold my first game (LAND OF THE RISING SUN, back
in 1979-80), I _did_ have to cope with the publisher
repeatedly suggesting I list it as written by myself and
my husband (who _had_ served as a useful proofreader). And
before that, when I'd first started publishing my RPG
APA, ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS, I got a phonecall from Gygax
who went into total shock when he heard my voice and just
kept repeating, in shocked tones: "You're a woman!"
I suspect even these are problems that male gaming
freelancers have not had to cope with parallel versions of.
I'm not a web browser so I probably won't get around to
looking at the site that sparked this discussion, but
now that it's getting more general, I thought I'd comment.
Marshman
Lise Mendel <cata...@access.digex.net> wrote:
>>campus gaming club by stupid, sexist comments. And now, of course,
>>we have Marshman's knee-jerk reactionary response.
>>
>>>To Canadian Gamers?
>>
>>If it allowed me to have more contact with other gamers in Canada or my
>>area, if it got me in touch with a GM with a great idea for a campaign
>>that I would enjoy, why the HELL not?
>>
>>Chris
>>
>>PS Lise, I guess you have the first rant about your page. :-)
>I only wish I could locate Marshman's original post (dejanews doesn't even seem to have it)... This snippet will be put on the page, though. :-)
Go ahead, if you want to, but before you do, let's make sure that the
point I was making is clear enough. It seems that many people in this
newsgroup (who have replied) like to put on the "I'm a happy go-lucky
this is fun hahahaha aren't we all happy" face in response to this.
BUT, by and large the original point has been missed.
That very simple point was that divisiveness is not good. Why is that
hard to understand? Why is it also hard to understand that gamers who
happen to be women can participate and enjoy the hobby WITHOUT coming
straight out and saying "I'm a women gamer!"?!?!? It would seem to me
that you could have acheived what you wanted without doing so. All
you needed to do was throw up some pic's of women gamers in action.
This would have been quite cool. Yet, when you then label it as a
"Female Gamers" section, it throws the whole thing around. Now we
don't have the incorporation of women into the gaming hobby, but
instead women seperating themselves from the rest of the gaming
community. This is not good.
Granted, there are some people in that community who would not like to
associate with (I'm referring to an earlier post when someone stated
that women don't like the machoism of men, the drinking, etc.).
However, would it not be better to try and change them? To become
better gamers? And, furthermore, why judge most males in the gaming
community by a few peoples' standards?
I continue to stand agape at people's unwillingness to listen to what
I am actually saying. Please hear me out. I DON'T DISLIKE FEMALE
GAMERS! I have nothing against them. My kneejerk response has not
been one as people would like to describe.
Dru Albright
Marshman (b...@interaccess.com) wrote:
: Nonetheless, I'm just expressing my opinion. That is certainly not a
: paternalistic concept. Sure, the Klan can congregate, as can other
: "groups with interest", but people speak against them because they see
: that "groups" motive in a negative way. That is what I am precisely
: doing - speaking out against this idea because I do not see the value
: in it.
I don't think you're getting it, here. I understand what you're saying,
in general. That is, that you feel there should be no 'special interest'
groups of any kind, because it creates subdivisions among us.
Wonderful. I don't entirely agree, but that's not really relevant.
Comparing the Ku Klux Klan (a group dedicated to a violent political and
religious agenda) to a 'Gaming needs Women' page, devoted to
discussing issues relevant to them is hardly in the same league.
Part of this may be because you've always been on the 'in-group', and
don't see why someone else should have one. But women are NOT in the
in-group for gaming, and never have been. Were you at Origins last
year? I was. And I didn't see nearly as many women as men (especially
when compared with Philcon, Philadelphia's SF convention, which seemed
equally distributed).
:
: IF you did research on the subject, and looked at society, it becomes
: evident that special interest groups, and groups which starchly
: distinguish themselves from the rest of society, do nothing but divide
: society more than is needed. This simply creates the concept that
: "female gamers" are different than other gamers. Yet what is needed
: in this friggin' world isn't people feeling seperate from each other.
This is what really undermines any point you have to make....your
arrogant attitude. Unless you've got an awful lot of documented proof,
and the agreement of a vast number of scholars, you've got yourself an
opinion, and trying to convince everyone you've 'done research on the
subject' only sounds pompous. And for someone who wants to promote some
sort of gamer unity, you seem hell-bent to divide us over a non-issue.
: What is needed is this: For people to view each other as human beings
: above all else; regardless of sex, race, creed, and the like. When
: concepts born out of a climate fogged with an insane sense of PC like
: "female" groups and "male" groups rear their ugly head, then people do
: not acheive this sense of belonging to one greater group. This is not
: good, in simple terms.
:
: Realize that I am not against female gamers. I've stated this OVER
: AND OVER, yet people are confusing this point.
I'm glad that you live in a Utopian society that has people like that.
The rest of us don't. My gaming groups have always had a 50/50 ratio of
male/female...but that was after getting most of them past the
preconceptions about gaming, past issues they'd already encountered with
SOME obnoxious male gamers, etc. Several of them had experienced
different kinds of sexual harrasment in games...but luckily, they stuck
with the hobby.
Maybe you don't understand that female gamers may have issues that male
gamers don't. I can't recall any male gamers I've played with ever
discussing their characters having been raped, but several of my female
gamers have. The problem here is that you refuse to see that some female
gamers might want to discuss some of their issue amongst themselves.
When you can offer up a better solution than, 'well, people should just
treat each other right', people will listen.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Visit WizarDru's Web Page!---http://www.netaxs.com/people/wizardru/--------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Home to the Rant-of-the-Week, Dru's Reviews, and Virtual Berenshar Pages!--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
--This Week's Rant: G.E.R.D --------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tonia Walden
>stereotypes in society! This is why I say, get your women gamer crap
>OUTTA' HERE!!! Why not just show gif images of women gaming? What's
>wrong with this? Or articles writen by women?
You didn't even look at the page did you - no, a post that merely
mentioned someone had put up a women's game page and it incited you to
rant - - but of course you were doing this in the interests of free
speech and democracy weren't you, not misogny. When I said you approved
of censorship it seem people who have different opinions to you are
ridiculed and told to SHUT UP and get out of here, implying they don't
have a right to post here or a right to hold opinions other than what you
approve of as correct ie - you want to censor them. BTW the original post
actually was telling us about a page dedicated to RPG, which means it has
more relevance to this group than your posts.
>appropriate in my mind. I do not need a neon light to tell that women
>are gaming, and putting up a page dedicated to women gamers will most
>certainly not go any distance in eliminating prejudice or making women
>known in gaming.
How do you figure this? I'd love to see a page where when someone asks
"do women game?" that they can be pointed to such a place. And the intent
was a list of contacts and I did see mention of reviews and articles.
What exactly is your problem here? There are interest groups for
everything - this newsgroup is a special interest group - are we
predjudice because we don't discuss CCG? Or are you just a kid
flamebaiting
Last word on the subject
Tonia
Ross Pippin
Marshman wrote:
> Once again, you misunderstand the point I'm making. I'm not telling
> anyone what to do, nor would I even broach that idea. I possess a
> firm belief in the idea that people should do as they please and have
> the liberty to do so, within boundaries of course (Ie., don't harm
> others, etc.)
>
> Nonetheless, I'm just expressing my opinion. That is certainly not a
> paternalistic concept. Sure, the Klan can congregate, as can other
> "groups with interest", but people speak against them because they see
> that "groups" motive in a negative way. That is what I am precisely
> doing - speaking out against this idea because I do not see the value
> in it.
>
> IF you did research on the subject, and looked at society, it becomes
> evident that special interest groups, and groups which starchly
> distinguish themselves from the rest of society, do nothing but divide
> society more than is needed. This simply creates the concept that
> "female gamers" are different than other gamers. Yet what is needed
> in this friggin' world isn't people feeling seperate from each other.
> What is needed is this: For people to view each other as human beings
> above all else; regardless of sex, race, creed, and the like. When
> concepts born out of a climate fogged with an insane sense of PC like
> "female" groups and "male" groups rear their ugly head, then people do
> not acheive this sense of belonging to one greater group. This is not
> good, in simple terms.
>
> Realize that I am not against female gamers. I've stated this OVER
> AND OVER, yet people are confusing this point.
"Computer, is this thread on-topic?"
"Dave, I detect distinct elements related to gaming. These would
be gaming, women, and roles. The probability of this thread being
related to this newsgroup is 86% The thread has the potential to
become quite stinky, however."
"All right, then. And stop calling me Dave."
As someone who's been dumped on once or twice by special interest
groups, I think I can sorta see where you're coming from. I'm not
certain that I agree with your point in this particular case.
My first point is that the WIG (I assume that means Women In
Gaming) have not done anything to prove themselves hostile or
threatening, to myself or others. I've seen no evidence so
far of any activities like male-bashing, desire for political
power or control, or attempts to force divisions between groups
of people. Of course, I haven't even looked at the web page. B^)
Assuming that they have destructive motives just because they
are a special interest group is a form of prejudice. If you
prejudge special interest groups because that's what they are,
then you're really not doing too much better than some of the
worst special interest groups out there. Take it from me; I've
been there and done that.
My second point is that women gamers *are* different, whether
we want to admit it or not. The plumbing is all different,
the horomonal circuits have some interesting differences
thrown in (I stare at all women who walk by; my wife is going
to go through the most amazing behavioral changes when she
gets pregnant), and we are *still* being conditioned by society
in somewhat different ways. Yes, maybe some day, somebody
will run us over with a huge steamroller, and we'll all be
one homogenous mess. (I kind of doubt it, and I rather hope
not.) In the meantime, we have to accept that there are
differences, and deal with them in some manner. Prejudice,
fear, and hatred is one, albeit very human, way. Another way
is to appreciate the differences and see what we can gain by
them. If these WIGs want to pass some info around about,
I dunno, tales of awkward female gamer moments and how they
were dealt with, or ways to deal with the GM's girlfriend
syndrome from the other side, or novel ways to handle roles,
or even have bitch sessions about weenie male gamers, let them.
(Like anybody can stop them, anyways). Maybe they'll come to
the game sessions with something good; maybe they'll come with
nasty attitudes; maybe nothing will change. I don't think,
however, that telling the ones who do feel different that
they're the same as everybody else is going to magically
make them the same as everybody else.
Heck, if I were to feel icky about a WIG website, I'd
probably have to get upset about my wife getting together
with other women for a stitch 'n' bitch (she's an avid
cross-stitcher) or a Mary Kay party. Just for
consistency, of course.
Soapbox mode off.
Incidentally, I passed the url to my wife - many thanks.
She hasn't had time to look at it, though, so I haven't had
any comments back.
Pip
--
Ross Pippin Reality is just God's opinion, only he's forcing it on
Unix Consultant me, and making me live by its constraints. I can't
say
p...@nortel.ca I like it any more than when humans do the same thing.
Justin Rogers
Concerning a special interest group for women gamers, I personally think
that is a bad idea as it leads to the feeling that female gamers are even
rarer than they are really. Special interest groups where there is no
real need for them just lead to a false sense of feeling special and put
upon by everybody who isn't a member of that group.
Justine (I know it says that this is from Justin but I dropped the e to
stop random morons on the home system emailing me.)
P.S: For the record I think that political correctness is a bad joke as well.
--
"Humans and flowers are having sex." "Poo-tee-wheet?" "Everything is true."
Wolves Glen Pub page: www: http://www.comp.it.bton.ac.uk/~jcr1/wolves.html
Meaningless junk brought to you by: J.C.R...@bton.ac.uk
Ross Pippin
Marshman wrote:
> That very simple point was that divisiveness is not good. Why is that
> hard to understand? Why is it also hard to understand that gamers who
> happen to be women can participate and enjoy the hobby WITHOUT coming
> straight out and saying "I'm a women gamer!"?!?!? It would seem to me
> that you could have acheived what you wanted without doing so. All
> you needed to do was throw up some pic's of women gamers in action.
> This would have been quite cool. Yet, when you then label it as a
> "Female Gamers" section, it throws the whole thing around. Now we
> don't have the incorporation of women into the gaming hobby, but
> instead women seperating themselves from the rest of the gaming
> community. This is not good.
So let's extrapolate a bit. I refer to myself as a gamer, and
I identify myself as a gamer. Doesn't this cause a rift between
myself and people who, say, watch Monday night football?
(Ignoring overlaps for the moment. "Some of my best friends
watch Monday night football." B^) Does this newsgroup really
need to exist, since it is only for gamers? If dividing people
away from the rest of humanity as gamers is all right, then why
do we bother creating seperate newsgroups for people who play
AD&D? (To keep them away from the rest of us. (Sorry, couldn't
resist that one. B^))
So gamers are kinda different, and geeks are kinda different,
and people who play this game system are kinda different, and
munchkins are kinda different, and hard-core LARPers are
kinda different. That doesn't mean we should all simply
identify ourselves as human and avoid seeking people with
similar interests.
The reason for seeking out people with similar interests is so
you can spend a greater percentage of your contact time on those
particular interests. Now, men and women are treated differently
in society at this particular time. In the future, that may
change, but it's not happening tomorrow. Given that, it makes
sense that when you move into the gaming subculture, men and
women will be treated differently. Not always, mind you,
but generally, especially when people are first starting to game
or first starting to pull a group together or first starting to
socialize, yes. Whenever you have some people who are different
for whatever reason, this may spawn some interests particular to
that group.
Darn near every female gamer I've talked to has had a story to
tell about gaming and being female. When I was in university,
darn near every lady engineer I knew had a story to tell about
being an engineering student and being female. The lady
engineers would get together from time to time and discuss
issues that pertained to them (often over a beer), but they
didn't come out hating male engineers, and they still worked
with male engineers all right. I suspect that lady gamers,
should they choose to discuss issues that pertain to them,
will come out much the same.
And sometimes it helps to chat about some of these issues.
My wife could tell me about some of the difficulties she's had
as a female gamer, and I can nod understandingly, but I've never
*been there*, in the same way that she's not a Unix helpline
consultant, explaining the same answers to the same questions,
every day, often to the same people, having troubled dreams
about being thrown by demons into pits full of users that rend
the flesh from my body, and drifting into other dreams about
seductive shotguns calling out to me, "Use me! Use me!"...
But I digress shamefully.
Anyways, I think that if women gamers choose to identify
themselves as such, and want to discuss women gamer issues,
I don't think it's going to slow their acceptance into gaming
sessions or their acceptance of other gamers. They may come out
with some amusing twists that they can share with the rest of
us, though. In my game, two of the ladies are running Houri
characters that want to hump everything they see, and another
seems fixated on the idea that her next character should be a
big barbarian woman who rapes men. I can't recall having a
campaign this lively before...
James Nicoll
I'm sure you've thought of this, but are the oceans on your
world shallow or deep? Assuming the local ecology's energy and nutrient
system works like ours, the majority of sealife would be found where
both nutrients and energy are found: near nutrient rich upwellings or
on continental shelfs.
Uniform 10 km deep oceans might be a little boring, biologically.
James Nicoll
--
" The moral, if you're a scholar don't pick up beautiful babes on deserted
lanes at night. Real Moral, Chinese ghost stories have mostly been written
by scholars who have some pretty strange fantasies about women."
Brian David Phillips
The White Crow
I hate politically correct stuff too. But I read the page in question,
and it in no way means to be "politically correct." Lise, as a women, is
just standing up and saying, "Look, there are other women gaming so you
don't need to be afraid to game just because you are female!" That's
all, nothing more.
I think that her idea is good. There are always 10 times as many lurkers
as posters in any newsgroup. Who knows how many of these lurkers have
never played any rpgs and are just checking them out? Who knows how many
of those would be gamers are women? And how many, male and female, that
have been turned off in some way by someone freaking out over a woman
exerting her female-ness a little. And only in a "hi, I have a web page
for females who game." Are you threatened by a woman who doesn't want to
sit back and be a "guy?"
ANd you can't get away from special interest groups. Anything that is
not mainstream is a "special interest." Gamers are a special interest
group, and better organized than some. (CARPa, I believe is the name of
one Special Interest Group for the benefits of gamers). And within the
Group of Gamers, you have your special interest factions as well: Those
who like fuzzy science vs those who think that anything less than
titanium hard sci-fi is a crime. Those who prefer lots of dice to those
who think dice are a disease. Those who want a thousand dollars worth of
rulesbooks to those who spend a weekend writing a 5 page summary of The
Way Things Work. Those who hate TSR and those who love them. See?
Any group of people who wants something different than the rest of people
is a special interest group. And there usually is two for every issue,
one on each side.
The way they get annoying is when they won't let anyone do anything they
don't like. Gamers are usually above wanting to ban opposing views,
although we seem to love to argue about it (for the sake of arguing,
usually). And perhaps that is all this is. But special interest groups,
if that's the label to be used, just give a small group of like minded
people a way to gather and share feelings and info. I see nothing moer
than that in the Women In Gaming Page. No cry for the destruction of
men in gaming, no takeover plans, not even a single line to call for the
removal of Things Men Like From Gaming. Just a place for women to come
together and put together a big enough voice to get gaming companies to
acknoledge a Women's Market: games designed that would appeal to women.
Not just women, but men too hopefully.
Just my 2 cents (even with inflation)
Whytcrow
--
"Manipulating your anticipation of your own manipulation."--EBN
Check out the best RPG I've ever seen: http://www.tai-gear.com/
"A thing doesn't have to change the world to be important."--Steve Jobs
The White Crow
> >Therein lies the problem for me... I felt no inclination to go look
> >because I don't think of myself as a "female gamer," but as a gamer
> >who happens to be female... I've yet to find any other female gamer
> >with whom I have anything more in common than J. Random Male Gamer.
>
Same here. I've always gotten along with males better than females (in general). But that has
a lot to do with the fact that all the things I liked to do (especially when I was a teenager)
held very few females in their ranks (chess team, rpgs, computers). As I got older, my circles
widened and females appeared, but they were a lot rarer than males.
> Good to hear it. I'm glad you've been able to game in an environment where
> you weren't constantly forced to represent all women, and that you've never
> had a new member of the group blatently treat you as though he thought you
> were only there because you were someone's (usually the GMs) girlfriend.
> Or have a gamer dedicate himself you to 'teaching' you the rules you've
> been playing for 10 years... Just out of curiosity, when did you start to
> game? I've been doing it since '77...
> >
I've been gaming since around '80 sometime :) And I've been in several games where my gender
became a problem. When I was a girlfriend of another player, althougb I'd been playing for
years even before I met him, I was treated like the proverbial fifth wheel and not taken
seriously. I've gotten weird looks from guys at gaming stores. And when I wasn't treated like
a freak, I was on occasion Just One Of The Guys. Like in order to fit in I had to sacrifice
being a female. A friend of mine met her husband when she joined a new game. She hated him
for a year because his first comment to her was something snide about her being a woman (he
eventually got over the attitude and she got over her hate. Happily ever after.)
> >Then again, having had a heavily math/engineering/computer-oriented
> >scholastic career, I consider myself "one of the guys" in most
> >regards.
> >
>
Hmm...I was into computers, and played on the chess team (where I got more lovely sexist
reactions). I eventually went into an English major, and now am a Internet Researcher. But at
many of the games i've been at my other interests and/or profession aren't discussed. And
while I've been One of The Guys for many years, it's as I said before: you are giving up your
female-ness. Just for a little while. Incidently, it's within my computer circle of friends
that I got the most respect. I was a female and one of the gang, without prejudice.
> Me too. That didn't stop a certain GM at GenCon from deciding he'd try to
> see if he could get me to raise my tournament score and lower my Rice
> Purity score (yes, it was this crude).
>
> Haven't had this kind of shit happening lately, but I'm not 14 anymore and
> don't intimidate easily :-)
>
Me either. Probably for the same reason ;) We grrrl gamers are tough, apparently!:)
> If this isn't going on any more, that's great! That's one of the things
> I'm trying to find out.
>Me too.
> Lise Mendel
> Mommy to Abigail (5/9/93) and Dorothy (10/19/95)
> http://www.access.digex.net/~catalyst/
Whytcrow (who's wondering how she lets herself get dragged into these flame wars)
James Nicoll
In article <DrEC7...@bton.ac.uk>, Justin Rogers <jc...@bton.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>Concerning a special interest group for women gamers, I personally think
>that is a bad idea as it leads to the feeling that female gamers are even
>rarer than they are really. Special interest groups where there is no
>real need for them just lead to a false sense of feeling special and put
>upon by everybody who isn't a member of that group.
I run a store, and days go by between female customers coming in.
In KW at least, women who game are indeed uncommon.
I wonder, why the fuss over a web page aimed at a market unified
by sex when magazines and books exist which are aimed at a specific
segment of the population?
Marshman
Ok... I'm going to say my last words on this topic:
1.) For those of you who don't think I know what I'm talking about
(Dru Albright, etc, others who say 'what research'). I'm in High
school, as stated, and I'm on the debate team (which is where most my
time goes, other than gaming.) Anyways, the November-December topic
was this: The pursuit of feminist ideals is detrimental to the
acheivement of gender equality [this is for LD (Lincoln-Douglas) value
debate]. Granted, this page is not about feminism by any means, but
the research that I did do (And there was a crapload of it... ask any
HS debater) still spills over into this area. In light of this, many
sources such as the book Backlash, by Susan Faludi, studies done by
periodicals ranging from the Washington Post to Newsweek, and the like
do state that seperate groups for people who see themselves as
seperate from the rest of society do in fact harm the overall end of
eliminating stereotypes and divisiveness between the two genders (Kind
of a long sentence, sorry). Things like "female gamers" just
reinforce the stereotypes that women are different. this leads into
point 2...
2.) These stereotypes are harmful. The REAL problem with women in
gaming isn't just the fact that we are talking about gaming, but a
much larger one. It's essentially the viewpoint that many, many
people hold in society. This viewpoint, that women are different and
should be treated as such, is what needs to be overcome and changed in
order to make the gaming community a more hospitable environment for
women. People need to THINK differently. This is not accomplished
when references are continously made to one group or another as
distinct from a larger entity. For example, one we refer to the
normal "gamers" and then use the term "female gamers" to seperate them
from the larger group, "gamers". What does this do? It reinforces
the idea that "females" are different (they are their different group
after all,) and thus"female gamers" will be treated differently. This
leads to point 3...
3.) This is bad. One post mentioned that a women just wanted to be
felt as part of the group without losing her female-ness (I'm
paraphrasing here.. Sorry White Crow). What must be realized is that
women are not different from men. Yes, I know they have different
hormones and physiology, but at heart, they are human beings
deserving of the same respect and such as anyone else. This is key:
women should be viewed in this manner, but if viewed differently
because of their special groups, I fear that people like White Crow
will have a hard time ever fitting in. Ask yourselves why she wasn't
able to do so without acting like "one of the guys"? It's not likely
because the men viewed her as they viewed themsleves. It's because
the men in this situation viewed White Crow as something different,
and by doing so they were able to treat her differently. The problem
here, once again, is people's perspective. By labeling "gamers who
are female", which one enlightened person wrote, as "female gamers"
that stereotypical viewpoint is reinforced...
4.) Some of you posting obviously do not think so. The problem is
that it is not you who is the problem (I hope). The people who cause
the atmosphere for "gamers who are female" to be a sometimes
disgusting one would definitely have their steretypical views
reinforced by this idea of "female gamers".
5.) So in conclusion, I hope that what I am saying is finally
understood after all this time. The problem at the heart of this
isn't confined to gaming alone; it is much deeper. The path to
solving this stereotypical viewpoint of men and other people, of all
types of prejudices, isn't by constantly creating distinct groups and
seperating them from the larger group. This solves nothing. Instead,
what is needed is much more, and when small and distinct groups do
emerge, more harm is done than good. Would not the page have been
better served by creating a section discussing "gaming" as a hobby
that all people should be able to enjoy? I think so. Even something
like a "Gamers Mosaic", put together of all types of gamers, would
have been better.
--I probably will be posting again in hindsight...
James Nicoll
In article <3198B9...@io.com>, The White Crow <whyt...@io.com> wrote:
>I hate politically correct stuff too. But I read the page in question,
>and it in no way means to be "politically correct."
Is it just me or is there a huge irony involved in approving
of material beause it *isn't* 'politically correct'?
Joseph M. Saul
>Hmmm - You realise you are advocating censorship - funny from a person
>who supposedly has a problem with political correctness.
Not at all. Here in America, censorship can come from both the Left and
the Right... and sometimes both at once, on the same issue. It's
perfectly normal for an American conservative to decry the "PC movement,"
and then support censorship of material dealing with sex, for example.
To get this back on topic, though, I think it's worth noting that there's
only been one hostile post...
Joe Saul
jms...@umich.edu
Mr. Tines
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
On Mon, 13 May 1996 22:51:45 GMT, in <4n8eha$k...@nntp.interaccess.com>
b...@interaccess.com (Marshman) wrote.....
I'm afraid that your attitude was speaking far more loudly than your words.
- --#!/bin/perl -s-- -HAVE *YOU* EXPORTED A CRYPTO SYSTEM TODAY? -RSA in PERL
_______ $m=unpack(H.$w,$m."\0"x$w),$_=`echo "16do$w 2+4Oi0$d*-
/_ __(_)__ ___ ___ ^1[d2%Sa2/d0<X+d*La1=z\U$n%0]SX$k"[$m*]\EszlXx++p|dc
/ / / / _ \/ -_|_-< `,s/^.|\W//g,print pack('H*',$_)while read(STDIN,$m,
/_/ /_/_//_/\__/___/@windsong.demon.co.uk ($w=2*$d-1+length($n)&~1)/2)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6ui/v.byte3/cp850
iQCVAwUBMZgfdooUd45Z7dNFAQFfCQP7BwRCEALFYX0cHoRA/jYc4vZGfnjIpDKO
6eI0RulcvmBYdNg0BIUNjPrsavXrdtC/vHQiOV31GjW1vuOqEZZ1TfDVY2qZtxWa
9PA4vBDRw10ntgyzzLIMJfRPGuqg+kkMTkcQo0iGiOhzKG5tDF2VOho6/KLADSf+
81Uu4uZt/Ag=
=ucqH
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Lise Mendel
jc...@bton.ac.uk (Justin Rogers) wrote:
>
>Concerning a special interest group for women gamers, I personally think
>that is a bad idea as it leads to the feeling that female gamers are even
>rarer than they are really. Special interest groups where there is no
>real need for them just lead to a false sense of feeling special and put
>upon by everybody who isn't a member of that group.
Is a web page a special interest group?
>Justine (I know it says that this is from Justin but I dropped the e to
>stop random morons on the home system emailing me.)
>
>P.S: For the record I think that political correctness is a bad joke as well.
What about _this_ page is PC? Please let me know... :-)
Lise Mendel
Mommy to Abigail (5/9/93) and Dorothy (10/19/95)
http://www.access.digex.net/~catalyst/WIG/
http://www.access.digex.net/~catalyst/
Lise Mendel
b...@interaccess.com (Marshman) wrote:
>grim...@iastate.edu () wrote:
>
>>In article <4n6780$5...@nntp.interaccess.com>,
>>Marshman <b...@interaccess.com> wrote:
>
>
>>>Nonetheless, this is a serious statement about all the politically
>>>women gamer crap OUTTA' HERE!
>
<snip>
Let's be fair, here. Marshman's quote _was_ taken out of context. (I've finally seen his whole post...)
>
>
>
>You've seen to mistaken my intent here. I too have a lot of friends
>who are women and are gamers as well. Hell - my best friend is a girl
>(I'm only 17) who is a gamer. I'm not by any means saying that women
>shouldn't participate in gaming. This would be stupid for they a rich
>source that has siginificantly bettered any gaming activity I have
>been witness to.
>
>So... what am I saying? What I'm saying is that I hate the
>polictically correct atmosphere that I'm growing up in. I detest it.
>Why must there be a special interest group for everything? Why must
>everything that women do be noted as if it is a miracle in the making?
>I've done my research here. Most people, when they see something such
>as a "Women gamer's page" then tend to view women seperately and
>stererotype them as distinct from the male gamers.
Have you seen the page? Or are you just going from the title?
If you have an
>ounce of wit about you, you know this is bad; it reverses years and
>years of work which people like my mother have put in to eliminate
>stereotypes in society! This is why I say, get your women gamer crap
>OUTTA' HERE!!! Why not just show gif images of women gaming? What's
>wrong with this? Or articles writen by women? This would be far more
>appropriate in my mind.
Please visit the page and see what _is_ there before you go off. If you don't like it, please e-mail me and I'll be glad to include=
your comments on the site. Take a look at what I'm trying to do with it before your "PC" reflex jumps in. If you've seen it, tell=
me what I've done with it (besides the title) which peeves you off.
I do not need a neon light to tell that women
>are gaming, and putting up a page dedicated to women gamers will most
>certainly not go any distance in eliminating prejudice or making women
>known in gaming. And anyways, the people who do not know such things
>(that women are equal/good for gaming) won't begin to understand them
>just because of a women's gamer page.
The page actually discusses things that have actually happened to women while gaming. To be honest, it's not aimed at raising male =
consciousness, since, as I've said before, the vast majority of gamers, men and women, want to play in groups with both.
It's meant to be a starting point for women and girls who feel uncomfortable in a hobby dominated by men and boys. Some pretty amaz=
ing harassment certainly _has_ happened, and (hopefully to a much lesser extent) still does.
Is it your contention that the "proper" thing to do is to grin and ignore it? To find another gaming group? It's a game, it's supp=
osed to be fun. Many women just give up gaming when something like this happens, because it makes it un-fun. I think you'll agree =
that's not productive.
BTW: I tried to approach it with a little levity - that's why the logo is a "venus" symbol and the page is pink. The attitude is a=
bit toungue in cheek. But there is an element of seriousness here.
Thank you for including your age. I started gaming before you were born, and maybe things have changed more than I thought they have=
in the last nineteen years. Please ask your friend if she's ever encountered any of this crap and LET ME KNOW!!!! One of the reas=
ons I put the silly thing up is to see how much/little things have changed.
Lise Mendel
Mommy to Abigail (5/9/93) and Dorothy (10/19/95)
http://www.access.digex.net/~catalyst/WIG/
Karen J. Cravens
In article <4n8qpn$s...@news3.digex.net>,
Lise Mendel <cata...@access.digex.net> wrote:
>Good to hear it. I'm glad you've been able to game in an environment where
>you weren't constantly forced to represent all women, and that you've never
>had a new member of the group blatently treat you as though he thought you
>were only there because you were someone's (usually the GMs) girlfriend.
>Or have a gamer dedicate himself you to 'teaching' you the rules you've
>been playing for 10 years... Just out of curiosity, when did you start to
>game? I've been doing it since '77...
Early 80's, myself. I've had all that happen. Lasts about five
minutes. Or about two messages on a BBS, which is a similarly
geek-male-dominated environment.
Maybe I've been lucky. I think I have a knack for guessing what it
takes to defuse the situation early, too, be it reassurance that
"girls" don't bite, or a quick turn-the-tables humiliation early on.
"Geek Empathy." Heck of an advantage to put on the character sheet.
:}
Silver
--........................................................................
Phoenyx Roleplaying Listserver - majo...@phoenyx.southwind.net
Home of wichita-1871-l, Mythic West PBeM RPG
..........................................................................
Jose Garcia
Blue Planet sounds cool, are you going to any of the summer cons this
summer to show off previews?
Jose Garcia
Co-Designer of Shadowfist, Best Card Game of '95 according to:
Scrye Readership Awards, Pinnacle Awards, Ventura Magazine. Currently up for the Origins Award.
Shadowfist Web Page http://www.aracnet.com/~bruce/daedalus/index.html
AtlasGames
Very cool! I've wondered what was the Big Project Jeff Barber has been
working on with Biohazard...I look forward to seeing this game!
-----------------------------------------------------------
[O] John A. Nephew Atlas...@aol.com
[0] President, Atlas Games Cust. Service (612) 638-0098
[O] Atlas Web Page: http://www.io.com/~presage/agindex.html
Chris Goodwin
In article <4n8eeo$k...@nntp.interaccess.com>,
Marshman <b...@interaccess.com> wrote:
>Realize that I am not against female gamers. I've stated this OVER
>AND OVER, yet people are confusing this point.
It couldn't be because your first, knee-jerk reaction to her posting was
"Get this women gamer crap OUTTA' HERE!"
It couldn't be because you *immediately* attacked her and her web page as
pandering to the PC movement.
It couldn't be because you haven't yet successfully been able to actually
make a point; you seem to keep getting bogged down in defending yourself.
"I didn't say that, I didn't mean that..."
Nah, couldn't be.
Get down off your cross, guy. Someone may need the wood.
--
arc...@peak.org <*> http://www.peak.org/~archer
Listkeeper: Libertarian Fiction (libfic-l) mailing list
and Jack Chalker (chalker-l) mailing list. E-mail for details.
Oceania: A New Country In Development <*> http://oceania.org
Bruce Baugh
>I've heard accounts from girls/women of boys/men trying
>to intimidate them into dropping out of gaming by
>gangraping their female PCs -- or criticizing their
>male PCs as wimps if _they_ didn't happily participate
>in a gangrape.
I saw this happen twice, once in high school and once in college. I
think it's relatively rare, but even a few occurrences are too many.
>I suspect even these are problems that male gaming
>freelancers have not had to cope with parallel versions of.
I think you're right, though there are various analogous (not identical,
analogous) bigotries. Some of the anti-Christian prejudice I've
encountered among a few folks I did compute work for was thick enough to
cut with a knife - bare-faced assertions that no fucking fuzzy-headed
God-cringer could ever competently do...precisely what I was doing. More
common, I think, is the knee-jerk homophobia I've run into in game
stores, which sometimes makes it difficult to comfortably invite gay
friends to go check out new releases with me.
Bruce Baugh <*> br...@aracnet.com <*> http://www.aracnet.com/~bruce
See my Web pages for
New science fiction by Steve Stirling and George Alec Effing er
Christlib, the mailing list for Christian and libertarian concerns
Daedalus Games, makers of Shadowfist and Feng Shui
Marshman
Ross Pippin <p...@bnr.ca> wrote:
>Marshman wrote:
>So let's extrapolate a bit. I refer to myself as a gamer, and
>I identify myself as a gamer. Doesn't this cause a rift between
>myself and people who, say, watch Monday night football?
>(Ignoring overlaps for the moment. "Some of my best friends
Nope... this is completely different. If we had "Female Monday Night
Football watchers" and "Male [same thing], then it would be ok.
Watching football and gaming are different.
>change, but it's not happening tomorrow. Given that, it makes
>sense that when you move into the gaming subculture, men and
>women will be treated differently. Not always, mind you,
>but generally, especially when people are first starting to game
>or first starting to pull a group together or first starting to
Ok... if women are treated differently, how will identifying them as
"female gamers" help the situation?
G Benage
In article <jgarcia-1405...@blv-pm15-ip23.halcyon.com>,
jga...@halcyon.com (Jose Garcia) writes:
> Blue Planet sounds cool, are you going to any of the summer cons this
>summer to show off previews?
Yes, but I don't have a formal schedule in front of me...I'm not even sure
one exists! BioHazard has been running very cool multimedia Blue
Planet scenarios at conventions throughout the Mid-West for some time
now...you have to see (and experience!) one of these things to believe
it. I believe we'll be hosting one at the Eclipse Gaming Convention in
Columbia, Missouri (May 24-26). We aren't scheduled for any events
at the major cons, like GenCon or DragonCon, but we'll probably be there
gaming, shmoozing, and talking Blue Planet to anyone who will listen. :-)
Several months before the game's release, we'll also be distributing a
free, full-color Blue Planet preview booklet. The preview will have
background, characters, and a scenario that gamer's can play to get a
sneak-peek at the game and its setting. I'm sure we'll be handing-out a
few of these preview booklets at conventions, as well.
G Benage
In article <DrEK2...@novice.uwaterloo.ca>, jam...@ece.uwaterloo.ca
(James Nicoll) writes:
> I'm sure you've thought of this, but are the oceans on your
>world shallow or deep? Assuming the local ecology's energy and nutrient
>system works like ours, the majority of sealife would be found where
>both nutrients and energy are found: near nutrient rich upwellings or
>on continental shelfs.
Well, Jeff Barber is the resident marine biologist and all-around science
guru at BioHazard, but I'll answer the question as best I can. The simple
answer is "yes, the oceans are both shallow and deep." Posedion's
surface is more than 96% ocean, but that leaves room for countless
volcanic archipelagos scattered across the planet. Poseidon's ecology
is far more diverse than Earth's and has evolved more than three times
as long as life on Earth. Jeff is detailing a number of cool ecozones
within which this diverse biota can be encountered: the volcanic islands,
coral atolls, tectonic ridges and trenches, abyssal plains, sargasso
flats,
strata caverns, and even a volcanic polar oasis. And a lot more.
Indeed, as we speak, Jeff is writing a brief introduction to oceanography
that is intended to dispel Hollywood's myths about the oceans and what
one finds there. It's good stuff and should be a big help for GMs like me
who were playing D&D instead of attending biology class back in high
school...
Harold Carmer
Lise Mendel (cata...@access.digex.net) wrote:
Hello Lise and others,
I would be interested in reading what is written from the female
perspective. I am guilty of having a female in the group who was my
girlfriend at the time (with myself as GM) and have also had an incident
of "rape" involved in my world with regards to a gamer who was female. I
pride myself on the fact that I "attempt" to roleplay my worlds in as
realistic a fashion as I can manage. While not a historian in the
strictest of senses, I like to understand from the socialogical
standpoint, why certain cultures went down the paths they did. The
young lady in the group roleplayed her character to the best of her
abilities, and left herself in a situation that she should not have (she
was knocked out by the other player characters in the group because she
had an overly honed sense of lawfulness and justice - so she attacked the
party members. Weaponless and bereft of clothing so as to slow her down,
the party made the mistake of leaving her for the river pirates. There
is more to the story, but the point is - she was vulnerable to the lusts
of men who are without scruples. All people in the group except one,
felt bad about the way things ended up for her character - and she got
the perfect revenge, but that is another story <grin>)
The point that I want to make is this: I am glad you are getting your
web page started, so that others like myself can learn more of other
perspectives, carry on a personal dialog in case we need other people's
ideas to "spice" up our own worlds. As long as the dialog doesn't get
personal between anyone here, I see no reason not to explore different
opinions and different concepts.
On a personal level, I am hard of hearing, 6'4", brown haired, brown
eyed, mustached 250 lb. man. I enjoy history, science, math, sociology,
physcology, bike riding, horseback riding, camping, foil and saber
fencing, sword collections, reading just about anything except romance
novels (sorry - my male prejudgedice) and so on. In high school, I was
manager for the girls swim team for 2 years, Girls volleyball team for 5
years (2 after graduation), Girls Basketball for 2 years, Girls Soccor
for 1 year and participated in water polo for 2 years, swimshow for 1
year, guy's swimteam for 2 years and guy Volleyball for two years.
Despite all that, I STILL don't understand women! <grin>. I have seen my
wife terrify men on the fencing strip (those guy at least had brains
<grin>) and I have seen her involved in many things that help bring down
the illusions of what women can and cannot do...
I have a lot of "opinions" regarding women in a fighting society, and I
know darn well that helpless women are victimized on a regular basis. It
makes my wife feel good that she can balance a few wrongs against
"bullies" and she gets a bit of satisfaction from gaming. In one
campaign my best friend ran, one of our players was raped by a woman in a
Spanish inquisition setting - which included the disfigurement of manly
functions: we all winced at that one...
Well, I will bring this to a close. I look forward to seeing your
website, and I hope that we can get to know each other as a
correspondant. In addition, I am always open to the idea of conceptual
exchanges...
Respectfully,
Hal Carmer
James Nicoll
In article <4nb946$2pk...@marid.friedlander-bey.org>,
Bruce Baugh <br...@aracnet.com> wrote:
snip
> More
>common, I think, is the knee-jerk homophobia I've run into in game
>stores, which sometimes makes it difficult to comfortably invite gay
>friends to go check out new releases with me.
How does that manifest itself? Homophobic jokes that occur
while your friends are in the stores or actual hostility directed at
them? If the second, how the heck do the bigots know who to target?
As far as I can tell, gays don't adhere to media stereotypes.
I got contacted by a local gay group wanting to know if I
ran a gay-friendly business, which puzzled me greatly: how would
the subject of the customers' sexual orientation come up in a
standard sale? It seems orthagonal to moving games. It might come
up in conversation, but generally if it did, Ontarians being the
private folk they are, there'd have to be some degree of friendliness
there before it got mentioned.
Bright Light: none of the customers I know to be gay come
in with their SOs*, except the couple who both game. Ah. Come to think
of it, they apparently got a hostile reception at another store, too.
James Nicoll
*Or they do, and I'm clueless.
Daryn Brown
In article 5...@netcom.com, sfel...@netcom.com (Steven B. Fellows) writes:
> I have not had a chance to look at Lisa's page. But I agree with the poster,
> who said that it is clearly apparent why there are so few women playing
> when you have kneejerk responses.
>
> Most of the complaints that I have heard from women about gaming include:
> 1) No other women playing in the game.
> 2) The other players behave like pigs.
> 3) The games are always voilent, noone thinks through problems.
> 4) I am not interested in the guns, and would like to learn more about
> *insert spells, plot, character development, etc.*
> 5) Some guys constantly tellingme what to do, or trying to coach me when
> I don't want to be coached.
>
> These complaints also come from a lot of other guys, but a lot of them stem
> from the fact that these are women trying to play in a game dominated by men.
>
> If something can be done to attract more women to the game, then that is great.
> I think a page like Lisa is setting up (reminder, I have not seen it yet).
> would be great if it addresses these issues: treat women as people and not
> as objects.
>
> Hey, it just makes it a more fun social occasion.
>
> -Steve
> sfel...@netcom.com
>
I've got three of the sharpest women ever in my group. My wife, the
sister of another player and the third is a friend of my wife. The
men in my group are happy to have them because they are thinkers
and save the group from having to duke it out every time. And its
not always true that women want magic users or alot of plot. The
sister plays an 7 1/2 tigermorph genetic-built powerhouse who is
a violent fury. The universe we play in is full of terror so their
isn't that much call for the "show'em some leg" crap some gm's are
guilty of so they are pretty much one of the boys (pardon the pun).
And I don't give the men in my group time to be pigs, because I
don't run a safty net under my games. Death waits for no one.
DBIII
Daryn Brown
In article K...@novice.uwaterloo.ca, jam...@ece.uwaterloo.ca (James Nicoll) writes:
> In article <3198B9...@io.com>, The White Crow <whyt...@io.com> wrote:
> >I hate politically correct stuff too. But I read the page in question,
> >and it in no way means to be "politically correct."
>
> Is it just me or is there a huge irony involved in approving
> of material beause it *isn't* 'politically correct'?
>
> James Nicoll
How did politics get involved in this thread anyway. The original post said
"I've got a section for women gamers, come check it out." Whas the big deal?
I'm not theatened by it. I don't think all male groups are going to succumb to
the "Sisterhood of Gamers tm." just because of a page. I LOVE the idea and
I'll read the page so as to find out what I may need to improve upon as a
GM as far as female pc's are concerned. This doesn't seem like feminist
propaganda to me, just seems like an avid gamer trying to share something
new. I didn't see a sign that said no men allowed.
Politically correct. Ha
I've never seen a politician be correct.
DBIII
Stuart McAndrew
Lise Mendel wrote:
>
> jc...@bton.ac.uk (Justin Rogers) wrote:
> >
> >Concerning a special interest group for women gamers, I personally think
> >that is a bad idea as it leads to the feeling that female gamers are even
> >rarer than they are really. Special interest groups where there is no
> >real need for them just lead to a false sense of feeling special and put
> >upon by everybody who isn't a member of that group.
>
> Is a web page a special interest group?
Most of the time they are, actually. I would say FRPing or whatever you
want to call it is a special interest. I certainly know that it is for
me.
> >Justine (I know it says that this is from Justin but I dropped the e to
> >stop random morons on the home system emailing me.)
> >
> >P.S: For the record I think that political correctness is a bad joke as well.
>
> What about _this_ page is PC? Please let me know... :-)
>
> Lise Mendel
> Mommy to Abigail (5/9/93) and Dorothy (10/19/95)
I, like so many others, havn't seen your page. I don't have WWW access,
so it doesn't look like I will. But, was declaring you had a page for
female gamers not a bit off? Your .sig clearly shows you as a member of
the femal gender, unless something horrible happened....
Let me put it to you this way... If someone had a page for male gamers,
would you really be interested in visiting it?
Your title was a bit off. "Lise's gaming page" may not be too original,
but it shows that *you* are a female gamer, without making the men (i.e.
me) feeling unwelcome. With ideas for helping other women into the
scene, what men can do to help (I've scared off every women I've talked
to about RPG's) and commentry from both sides it would be cool.
As is, I think most men will avoid your page, which is a shame.
BTW, how *do* you get women into your groups. My V:TM group is pretty
small (4 of us), and all male. I need fresh input, and women *do* tend
to be less "I'll bash him to a pulp" orientated. I'm trying to get a
more political campaign, but the players want to go back to Rifts
<gulp!>.
--
Stu
R23...@email.sps.mot.com
"We're ruled by effete bastards"
Mark Renton, Trainspotting
Joseph M. Saul
>As is, I think most men will avoid your page, which is a shame.
Hardly. Most of the men participating in this thread seem to have read
it, and I'd think any curious web-surfing gamer (regardless of
chromosomal makeup) would check it out. I doubt it would even chase the
*worst* geeks away. They'd either
1. React with shock, not believing that there *are* any women in
gaming, and read the thing to see if it's all a hoax,
2. Assume it's a swimsuit calendar (and read it -- or at least look at it),
3. Read it in hopes of figuring out how to *find* women who game,
4. Read it, and post outraged messages to r.g.f.m decrying it as separatist
and claiming it's the worst thing to happen to the hobby since Magic(tm).
Male gamers who *aren't* hopeless geeks will probably read it out of
curiosity, if nothing else. Those who have been through thousands of
"women in gaming" discussions may well choose to ignore it, assuming it's
the same old stuff, but that's their prerogative, and they may miss out.
Naming it "Lise's gaming page" would draw a much smaller readership;
there are probably hundreds of "So-and-so's gaming pages" out there.
Joe Saul
jms...@umich.edu
Jeff Koke
In article <4naurk$8...@nntp.interaccess.com>, b...@interaccess.com
(Marshman) wrote:
> Ok... I'm going to say my last words on this topic:
>
[background info snipped]
> Things like "female gamers" just
> reinforce the stereotypes that women are different. this leads into
> point 2...
First, let's get our terms straight. A "stereotype" is when you take a
general characteristic of a class of people and apply it to a specific
individual. This is bad because even if the vast majority of women don't
play roleplaying games, that doesn't tell you anything about any one
specific woman. "Generalization" is when you take the traits or behavior
of one or more particular people, and assume that all people of that type
share that behavior.
It is not a stereotype to say that women are different. It's a generalization.
> 2.) These stereotypes are harmful. The REAL problem with women in
> gaming isn't just the fact that we are talking about gaming, but a
> much larger one. It's essentially the viewpoint that many, many
> people hold in society. This viewpoint, that women are different and
> should be treated as such, is what needs to be overcome and changed in
> order to make the gaming community a more hospitable environment for
> women. People need to THINK differently. This is not accomplished
> when references are continously made to one group or another as
> distinct from a larger entity. For example, one we refer to the
> normal "gamers" and then use the term "female gamers" to seperate them
> from the larger group, "gamers". What does this do? It reinforces
> the idea that "females" are different (they are their different group
> after all,) and thus"female gamers" will be treated differently. This
> leads to point 3...
Strawman. No one is arguing that a web page devoted to women gamers is
designed to break down the barriers between men and women. It's designed
to give support and reassurance to women who have experienced the harmful
effects of the barriers that already exist. By your logic, emergency rooms
should not treat gunshot wounds because to do so would encourage
shootings. It isn't the doctors' job to discourage gunplay. Does passing
out condoms to high school students encourage sexual behavior? Does
providing clean needles to heroin addicts encourage drug use? Maybe. But
the measurable positive effects of these programs greatly outweigh the
*possible* detriment.
Not every course of action related to a problem has to be aimed at fixing
the problem. Of course, the problem needs to be fixed, but its effects
also need to be ameliorated, and those who work toward that should be
respected and admired.
> 3.) This is bad. One post mentioned that a women just wanted to be
> felt as part of the group without losing her female-ness (I'm
> paraphrasing here.. Sorry White Crow). What must be realized is that
> women are not different from men. Yes, I know they have different
> hormones and physiology, but at heart, they are human beings
> deserving of the same respect and such as anyone else. This is key:
> women should be viewed in this manner, but if viewed differently
> because of their special groups, I fear that people like White Crow
> will have a hard time ever fitting in. Ask yourselves why she wasn't
> able to do so without acting like "one of the guys"? It's not likely
> because the men viewed her as they viewed themsleves. It's because
> the men in this situation viewed White Crow as something different,
> and by doing so they were able to treat her differently. The problem
> here, once again, is people's perspective. By labeling "gamers who
> are female", which one enlightened person wrote, as "female gamers"
> that stereotypical viewpoint is reinforced...
Wrong. Viewing something or someone as "different" does not necessarily
imply that you view them with any less respect. To come out and say "women
gamers are different than men gamers," without specifying how they are
different does not reinforce any generalization, except one that already
exists in someone's mind. Just as if I were to say that Porches are
different than BMWs. If you had a preconception that Porches were *better*
than BMWs, your preconception would be reinforced by my statement. But I
would not be responsible for your misunderstanding. And if I *knew* that
most people liked Porches better, I might take it upon myself to associate
with BMW lovers. People like to associate with other people who share
their views.
> 4.) Some of you posting obviously do not think so. The problem is
> that it is not you who is the problem (I hope). The people who cause
> the atmosphere for "gamers who are female" to be a sometimes
> disgusting one would definitely have their steretypical views
> reinforced by this idea of "female gamers".
>
You cannot make a class of people not exist simply by wishing it to go
away. The idea of "female gamers" is well-established in the minds of the
majority of the gaming community. You think this is bad, and perhaps it
is. But it is still there despite your objection. You seem to attack the
women's gamer page because it admits that the problem is there, but does
not directly attempt to solve it (though in fact it does -- bringing men
and women gamers together is a strong step toward gamer equality -- and
that's part of what the page is trying to accomplish).
>
> 5.) So in conclusion, I hope that what I am saying is finally
> understood after all this time. The problem at the heart of this
> isn't confined to gaming alone; it is much deeper. The path to
> solving this stereotypical viewpoint of men and other people, of all
> types of prejudices, isn't by constantly creating distinct groups and
> seperating them from the larger group.
Again, you are misunderstanding the nature of special interest groups. The
distinct groups are already there, separated against their will, due to
preexisting prejudice by the larger group. Male gamers, by consistently
treating women differently in their games, or excluding them altogether,
have created the idea of "women gamers." Now a single woman gamer has
created a web page devoted to supporting women who have experienced the
effects of male-gamer prejudice, and you scream, "special interest." True,
this page is not the solution to prejudice in gaming. But it's not the
cause of it either.
Would not the page have been
> better served by creating a section discussing "gaming" as a hobby
> that all people should be able to enjoy? I think so. Even something
> like a "Gamers Mosaic", put together of all types of gamers, would
> have been better.
>
All these things should be done, and have been done. This isn't an
either/or proposition. The vast majority of web pages devoted to gaming
have no special theme, nor are they aimed at one particular segment of the
gaming population. Why should one page, addressing some real problems,
cause this much resentment?
Jeff
Lise Mendel
Identifying "them"? "Help the situation".
I'm not trying to send a message to male gamers. I'm trying to produce
a space for female gamers. I'm not _excluding_ guys, but I'm not aiming
anything directly at them, either.
The way to change the situation is to encourage more women to game. For
reasons I've mentioned in my page, I think it's more effective if women
recruit other women than if it's purely men recruting women.
I do mention sexual harassment in the page. I consider it
'acknowledging reality'. It has happened. It does happen.
Of the correspondance I've gotten on harassment, I've heard a lot of
"I've never seen it, and if I did I'd stop it" from men, a lot of
"that's happened to me once or twice, but I really love gaming" from
women, one "I don't have any problem gaming with men" and one "this is
all PC crap and the wrong way to deal with it".
As far as PC, when I use that term I refer to people who say that
holding a particular view are 'damaging the cause' -- for example my
opinion of 'date rape', which is if you don't realize it's rape until
two days later (unless you're drugged/drunk and don't wake up until two
days later) then it's bad sex, not rape. This is NOT PC, and I've been
told I'm a bad feminist (BAD feminist, no walkies) because of it.
Marshman is saying that discussing the issue is damaging to the cause
because it's too PC. I'd call him PC, because he's trying to close down
a line of arguement he disagrees with him. I think we'll just have to
agree to disagree and get back to talking about games. :-)
Lise Mendel
Mommy to Abigail (5/9/93) and Dorothy (10/19/95)
G Benage
In article <DrGI7...@novice.uwaterloo.ca>, jam...@ece.uwaterloo.ca
(James Nicoll) writes:
> Spiffy-cool. I'll make sure to stock this.
Great! And if you'll e-mail me your contact info, I'll personally make
sure
you receive some copies of the full-color preview when it's released so
a) you'll know a little more about the product and company you'll be
investing in, and b) you'll have something cool to hand out to your
customers.
> "Three times as long as Earth" = 10-12 billion years*. That
>makes the system Poseidon is in as old as the galaxy, if not a little
older,
>and comparable in age to the smaller estimates of the universe's age.
I think this figure is based on the assumption that 3.5 billion years is
pretty accurate for Earth's evolutionary history. In other words, life on
Poseidon would have been evolving over a period of ~10 billion years.
By comparison, the Earth itself is probably only about 5 billion years
old. Based on studies concluded by W.A. Fowler, we've placed the
age of the Milky Way at 11.7 billion years or more. Current models of
the age of the universe place it somewhere between 14 and 20 billion
years.
That said, it's certainly true that Poseidon's neighborhood is a lot older
than ours and would have had a very interesting cosmological history!
Greg Benage
BioHazard Games
James Nicoll
In article <4nbqlc$b...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
G Benage <gbe...@aol.com> wrote:
>In article <DrEK2...@novice.uwaterloo.ca>, jam...@ece.uwaterloo.ca
>(James Nicoll) writes:
>
>> I'm sure you've thought of this, but are the oceans on your
>>world shallow or deep? Assuming the local ecology's energy and nutrient
>>system works like ours, the majority of sealife would be found where
>>both nutrients and energy are found: near nutrient rich upwellings or
>>on continental shelfs.
>
>Well, Jeff Barber is the resident marine biologist and all-around science
>guru at BioHazard, but I'll answer the question as best I can. The simple
>answer is "yes, the oceans are both shallow and deep." Posedion's
>surface is more than 96% ocean, but that leaves room for countless
>volcanic archipelagos scattered across the planet. Poseidon's ecology
>is far more diverse than Earth's and has evolved more than three times
>as long as life on Earth. Jeff is detailing a number of cool ecozones
>within which this diverse biota can be encountered: the volcanic islands,
>coral atolls, tectonic ridges and trenches, abyssal plains, sargasso
>flats, strata caverns, and even a volcanic polar oasis. And a lot more.
Spiffy-cool. I'll make sure to stock this.
"Three times as long as Earth" = 10-12 billion years*. That makes
the system Poseidon is in as old as the galaxy, if not a little older,
and comparable in age to the smaller estimates of the universe's age.
That means that Poseidon's star is probably less massive than the Sun,
and if it is a heavy element rich system, then its history may well
be atypical for systems of that age, since it predates the era in which
most heavy elements were produced.
Heh. In its early days, there may well have been a quasar within
tens of kiloparsecs of it.
James Nicoll
* From the beginning of life that is. Depends on how optimistic one is
that fossils older than the 3.5 billion year record will be found.
Anne B. Nonie Rider
lg...@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Lee Gold) wrote:
>I've heard accounts from girls/women of boys/men trying
>to intimidate them into dropping out of gaming by
>gangraping their female PCs -- or criticizing their
>male PCs as wimps if _they_ didn't happily participate
>in a gangrape.
I haven't seen those happen as a deliberate attempt to
drive the female gamers away, but I have seen them happen
as part of the male push-n-shove competitiveness, where you
harrass the tall guy for being tall and see how he takes it.
It's awfully easy for male gamers to see a female gamer
as *FEMALE*, and therefore not be able to see her as a real
person. You ever see that at family reunions, with your
embarrassing uncle, who when he's around gays can only think
of gay jokes, and when he's around Asians, can only think
of Chink jokes? Ever been uncomfortable around someone in
a wheelchair, and find yourself only able to discuss
handicapped issues rather than the White Sox game or the
latest animated movie?
Many male gamers running with a female gamer can only think
of "female" things (from a male point of view), like sex,
rape, pregnancy, and/or breast size. It's not a deliberate
attempt to harrass; it's half guys joking around and half
sheer tunnel vision.
Do I like it? No. Do I put up with it for long? No. Do I
think it's part of a male conspiracy? Hell no. So, when I
run into it with a new gaming group, I try to tell 'em what
to avoid if they want to keep the next female gamer who
comes along.
--Nonie
Anne B. Nonie Rider
Marshman, I'm not surprised to hear you're a high school debater.
Please don't take this as an attack, but it's common for young
white males to think that equality can only come when anyone
who isn't a young white male still tries to act like one.
Women choosing to interact with women; blacks being proud of
being black; these aren't anti-equality, but the necessary
counteractant to a society that has always valued white men.
Equality doesn't lie in treating everyone alike, nor treating
everyone like they should WANT to be alike. It lies in the rights
of everyone else to be whatever they want, and be valued for it.
I don't want to be treated like a male gamer, whatever that
is. I want to be treated like Nonie, who likes the company
of other female gamers sometimes. At 38, a gamer since 1976,
I figure I've earned the right to know what I want.
What women, blacks, gays, handicapped folk, and other such
need is NOT for you tell them how you think they ought to
behave. We need you, if anything, to mind your own business.
Debate involves verbal aggression, direct or disguised.
It's rarely kind, helpful, or useful to humanity except
as a defensive art used to shield others. Please examine
your own motives in initiating aggression, and consider
supporting real, living people by some other method than
arguing with them.
--Nonie
Chris Goodwin
In article <4n9rt6$g...@nyx10.cs.du.edu>,
Lee Gold <lg...@nyx10.cs.du.edu> wrote:
>When I sold my first game (LAND OF THE RISING SUN, back
>in 1979-80), I _did_ have to cope with the publisher
>repeatedly suggesting I list it as written by myself and
>my husband (who _had_ served as a useful proofreader). And
>before that, when I'd first started publishing my RPG
>APA, ALARUMS AND EXCURSIONS, I got a phonecall from Gygax
>who went into total shock when he heard my voice and just
>kept repeating, in shocked tones: "You're a woman!"
>
>I suspect even these are problems that male gaming
>freelancers have not had to cope with parallel versions of.
What about Kim Mohan and Tracy Hickman? (Were they ever freelancers?)
Archangel Beth
Marshman wrote:
>
> br...@aracnet.com (Bruce Baugh) wrote:
>
> >In article <4n6780$5...@nntp.interaccess.com>, b...@interaccess.com (Marshman) wrote:
>
> >>This is blatantly sexist and prejudiced.
>
> >Whatever happened to being able to mind your own business? I think the
> >original poster's idea is just like all the laundry list of red herrings
> >you posted - if there's interest, all of those should exist, too. People
> >should be free to associate with others with whom they feel a shared
> >interest, background, or experience, and those of you with the
> >paternalistic urge to tell everyone else how to live their lives should
> >leave well enough alone.
>
> Once again, you misunderstand the point I'm making. I'm not telling
> anyone what to do, nor would I even broach that idea.
And public ridicule of the concept, saying that "Hey, look,
this is BAD, little girl!", isn't "telling someone what
to do"? If you want to express an opinion, I suggest
abandoning your patriarchal debate-by-attacking tactics
(stars but it's great to be a Womens' Studies Minor -- you
learn all these *great* insults!) and trying something like,
"I'm concerned about your 'Women Gamers' page, because it
seems like this would lead to more division between male
and female gamers, instead of less."
Instead, you go on a rant about how you hate political
correctness (as does any sane person hate thought-stifling,
cookie-cutter, "we are all alike except where we're
different" thought-policing), and how this is obviously
Politically Correct in the worst way because it happens
to notice that there are gamers out there who have mammeries
and don't have genetalia that sticks out, and by gosh, there's
*fewer* of them!
And I, as a female who generally ignores "Patriarchy"
(no kidding, most of the time in the Womens' Studies
classes, I was the one going, "This happens? I never saw
this happen. You're kidding me, right? What's the big
deal?") -- I see your posts and *I* am offended, big time.
[...]
> Realize that I am not against female gamers. I've stated this OVER
> AND OVER, yet people are confusing this point.
They are confusing it because you keep harping on this
"difference is bad" thing. I thought you weren't politically
correct? Difference is a fact of life. The trick is to
be able to *see* that adjective, and see that it's going to
mean some different things (I *defy* you to claim that you
understand *exactly* what it feels like to bleed into your
undies for a week out of every month), and that the person
is *still* human.
Just like I have to look at people and accept that just because
they use a PC clone, doesn't mean they have irreversable
brain damage. Why, some PC-users go on and buy Macintoshes...
Me, I *like* checking out fem-gamers' web-pages! It's interesting.
I might get into discussions about "Oh, I can't *belive* this
sexist thing happened!" or "This guy I'm playing with is
really great!" or "Any tips on doing a male character without
confusing the guys?" Or maybe, "Gaming while pregnant -- what
to do when you have contractions during the final battle."
If you don't make a bigger deal out of "female gamer" than
you do out of "GURPS gamer" or "AD&D gamer" or "World of
Darkness gamer" or "Collectable Card Gamer", *then* you're
seeing "gamer" first and the adjective second.
I've got a set of web-pages devoted to GURPS. Are you going
to say that I'm dividing the gaming community because
I don't include AD&D?
Besides, it's just a Web Page, not rec.games.frp.female. Now
*that* would be silly. Way too much flaming, for one thing.
--emc...@nh.ultranet.com // arca...@io.com // emc...@jade.mv.net
July 13-14, PhoenixCon!
http://www.mv.com/ipusers/wrench/mjudson/Phoenix/
David Chart
In article <4ndhoc$q...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, gbe...@aol.com (G Benage) wrote:
>
> That said, it's certainly true that Poseidon's neighborhood is a lot older
> than ours and would have had a very interesting cosmological history!
>
Surely that should be 'very boring cosmological history'. If anything
interesting and cosmological had gone on in the neighbourhood, I doubt
you'd have got 11 billion years or so of life.
The game does sound interesting, however. A decent hard sf game would be nice.
--
David Chart
Trinity College non insanior
Cambridge isti tamen te me esse opinari uolunt
UK
Henry Perkins
Anne B. Nonie Rider wrote:
>
> b...@interaccess.com (Marshman) wrote:
>
> > This simply creates the concept that
> > "female gamers" are different than other gamers.
>
> Your point being? By and large, we ARE different from
> male gamers, for whatever reason of nature or nurture.
And so are city-bred people different from those of us who grew up where
there are thousands of trees for every person. Yet I manage to game
with those to whom "hickory" and "yew" are just words that mean "wood".
While it may be amusing to occasionally rant about these ignoramuses who
were raised on concrete, it would be folly to insist that only country
folk can understand why yew makes a good longbow. There are excellent
city-born carpenters, after all. So are there males who are verbally
rather than visually oriented, who have been trained to avoid conflict,
or are treated subserviently -- just to name a few random sex-weighted
characteristics. Why is female/male any more important than city/country
when you're gaming? In a low-tech, fantasy world, it's usually much more
useful to be acquainted with wilderness than to be a particular sex.
When my thief, Dheran, first was introduced to Sir Shelly, Reeve of
Danvers, he reacted with alarm because this was a FREAKIN' PALADIN; the
fact that Sir Shelly was a woman just didn't rise above the noise level.
If Dheran had been smitten because of Sir Shelly's good looks, I would
have been role-playing very badly. The subsequent events had Dheran
pretending to be a pious cleric, hanging back to pray for guidance as
Sir Shelly rushed headlong into battle, and doing minor healing (since
you pick up some of that when you're learning to make poisons) afterward.
This drove Sir Shelly's player nuts, since SHE know what Dheran was, but
she played the character well, and Dheran gained Sir Shelly's trust so
he could get near enough to steal The Balm Of Night, a holy artifact.
In ANY campaign, the important things are (1) playing in character,
(2) knowing the setting (in this case, the religious milieu), and
(3) everything else. Both Dheran and Sir Shelly were brought to life
because the players wanted to role-play, and were willing to study up
on historical models to enrich the game environment. As this was some
time ago, I can't recall much more about Sir Shelly's player than that
she was female and had dark hair. But I remember the *campaign* quite
vividly.
--Henry
--
It is better never to have been born. But who among us has such luck?
One in a million, perhaps. Henry....@3do.com
Archangel Beth
Marshman wrote:
>
> >[much pointless crap deleted]
>
> >>Nonetheless, this is a serious statement about all the politically
> >>correct crap we have to deal with. In short, IT SUCKS! Get your
>
> >_intelligent_ gamers I know have been women. Don't let a chromosome
> >fog your thinking. Well, more than it already has. More people gaming,
> >more people know what gaming is, as opposed to what the the
> >bible-thumpers would have the unknowing believe.
>
> >More "women gamer crap", please...this long-time gamer would much
> >appreciate it.
>
> >grim
>
> You've seen to mistaken my intent here. I too have a lot of friends
> who are women and are gamers as well. Hell - my best friend is a girl
> (I'm only 17) who is a gamer.
But would you want your son to marry one.... <pokerface>
> I'm not by any means saying that women
> shouldn't participate in gaming. This would be stupid for they a rich
> source that has siginificantly bettered any gaming activity I have
> been witness to.
>
> So... what am I saying? What I'm saying is that I hate the
> polictically correct atmosphere that I'm growing up in.
As a female gamer, and a minority therefore, I *like* knowing
about other female gamers, and have some interest in
checking out a page -- maybe I can find some female gamers
in my area, so I won't be the only female gamer in the group.
You got any idea how annoying it can be to be the only female
in a group? Real annoying. It's not whether or not the
group is "PC" (politically correct) or not (they're
not "oppressive"; they wouldn't dare...) -- it's just
being the *only* one. How'd you like to be in a game where
you were the *only* guy?
Why *not* have pages for all those other "minority" groups?
I'm sure that people who identify with some of those
catagories would *like* to know who they are. Friends
of ours were lamenting that there weren't many youngsters
gaming, so their son didn't have people his own age (about 12)
to game with.
> I detest it.
> Why must there be a special interest group for everything? Why must
> everything that women do be noted as if it is a miracle in the making?
You've been talking to too many feminazis, keed. Look at it
as a lash-back against the time when everything that women
did was *ignored*. It will swing out that way for a while,
then swing in, then swing out, and eventually we get something
we can all live with. But that's not today, and I appreciate
knowing that there *are* other women gamers around.
And, frankly, *you* don't get to rant about it, just as
only the very-tan-of-skin can make "racist" remarks. If it
isn't your cup of fur, ignore it. By lashing back against
all political correctness (which does *easily* get out of
hand!) when it was just a "women gamers" page, you *feed*
the urges that *created* politcal correctness. Help, help,
I'm being repressed.
> I've done my research here. Most people, when they see something such
> as a "Women gamer's page" then tend to view women seperately and
> stererotype them as distinct from the male gamers.
We are. There are fewer of us. (This means guy gamers should
be nice to us... ;-) ) We have slightly different
cultural upbringing. It's nice to have someone else who
understands instantly why you're asking about: contraceptives,
uterine replicators, if there's a spell to stop menses or not,
and why your mage is going to fireball the next insensitive
male character who makes a comment about "that time of
the month."
> [...]And anyways, the people who do not know such things
> (that women are equal/good for gaming) won't begin to understand them
> just because of a women's gamer page.
Look, the page isn't for you anyway. It's for *me*, and my
friend who used to game with us (she was seduced by the
World of Darkness...), and all the other female gamers I
know. Call it affirmation of our differences and similarities,
that keeps us from burning out when some guy automatically
assumes that if your female character is flirting, he can
pinch her butt through the armor. (That happened, in a PBEM.
My character happened to be around 18/30 ST, the strongest
PC of all, in fact, and she punched the other PC across the
room and wrecked a table. Solved the problem, though. Other
ways involve playing a 400 lb cat-centaur with Bad Temper, a
quick-tempered hotshot pilot, or a true feminazi from a
reversed-sex-roles culture who happens to pack a TL5 pistol
in a TL3 gameworld.)
(Now, that's interesting... In a different campaign, one
composed of two couples and their kids, and us (me and spouse),
I played a rather naive mageling-girl, and didn't think
twice about it. Also that rather unskilled elf-mage.
In the predominantly male campaigns that I'm in, I play
characters who don't take guff from anybody. *Fascinating* p
sychological insight there... I hadn't realized my character
choice was that automatic and subconscious.)
Henry Perkins
Scott Padget wrote:
>
> ... Some special-interest groups are
> constructive and useful; others tend to reinforce the very differences
> which the group is presumably attempting to combat. I believe Marshman was
> trying to tell us that Lise's page falls in the latter category--that the
> very act of identifying "Women Gamers" as a special interest group will
> tend to set them apart, with undesirable effects.
>
> I have a rule of thumb I use when trying to establish whether a given group
> appears constructive or merely PC (note that I am judging *appearances*
> with this rule, not Truth): Would the existence of a similar group be
> offensive to many people if an opposite-but-complementary special interest
> was served?
This is a reasonable test, but may be difficult to apply successfully as
it requires one to assume the mental frame of an "opposite" type person.
I have an easier test: Does the group include any characteristics which
are not freely choosable? If so, the group is divisive, and is probably
a bad idea. Thus "Illinois Gamers" is a fine group, because most anyone
who wants to can choose to live in Illinois and play RPGs there. But
"Canadian-Born Gamers Over 6' Tall" isn't freely choosable on 2 out of 3
points, so it's a bad (divisive) group.
On the topic at hand, I concur that RPGs are male-dominated, and for no
good reason. Discussion about how to get rid of this bias is a good idea.
Limiting that discussion to women doesn't help; it just avoids confronting
the problem.
Andrew Rilstone
>Nonetheless, this is a serious statement about all the politically
>correct crap we have to deal with.
It's her web page. She has things to say that she thinks girlies will be
mainly interested in. How is that politically correct.
Silly man.
--
Andrew Rilstone and...@aslan.demon.co.uk
*************************************************************************
"Children of a Future Age,
Reading my indignant page
Know that in a former time
Love, sweet love, was thought a crime!" William Blake
*************************************************************************
Andrew Rilstone
In article <4n6ef7$q...@news.iastate.edu>, grim...@iastate.edu writes
> More people gaming,
>more people know what gaming is, as opposed to what the the
>bible-thumpers would have the unknowing believe.
--
Joseph M. Saul
Henry Perkins said:
>On the topic at hand, I concur that RPGs are male-dominated, and for no
>good reason. Discussion about how to get rid of this bias is a good idea.
>Limiting that discussion to women doesn't help; it just avoids confronting
>the problem.
Everyone seems to be missing the point. She hasn't limited the
discussion to women. She hasn't said she'll post only comments from
women. She hasn't asked men to stay away from the page. She hasn't
suggested that women game only with other women. I'm not sure why people
keep reading something in that is not there.
While I'm at it, I think I'll attack Mr. Perkins' comment that only if
the distinguishing features of a group are freely-selectable is it "okay"
for that group to organize. (Other types of groups, he feels, are
divisive.) Frankly, I don't get it. Why is it divisive for, say, deaf
gamers to talk to each other -- but not Christian ones? Black gamers --
but not Libertarian ones? (And what, I wonder, would he say about gay
and lesbian gamers? The scientific jury is still out...)
Many members of these groups share common problems and concerns, and may
want to share advice about how to overcome them -- and give advice to the
rest of us about how to make them comfortable in our games, should we
choose to. I don't find that divisive. I think that hearing their
voices is more likely to lead to mutual understanding, assuming the rest
of us are willing to listen.
Joe Saul
jms...@umich.edu
Douglas E. Berry
In article <3199FC...@email.sps.mot.com>,
Stuart McAndrew <R23...@email.sps.mot.com> wrote:
>Lise Mendel wrote:
>>
>> jc...@bton.ac.uk (Justin Rogers) wrote:
>> >
>> >Concerning a special interest group for women gamers, I personally think
>> >that is a bad idea as it leads to the feeling that female gamers are even
>> >rarer than they are really. Special interest groups where there is no
>> >real need for them just lead to a false sense of feeling special and put
>> >upon by everybody who isn't a member of that group.
>>
>> Is a web page a special interest group?
>
>Most of the time they are, actually. I would say FRPing or whatever you
>want to call it is a special interest. I certainly know that it is for
>me.
Women make up a small portion of the RPG community. I have seen this page,
and it is currently a simple personal history (hello from a fellow dinosaur),
a *brief* overview of some of the unique problems faced by female gamers
(mainly being considered a sex object, both in play and real life), and an
invatation to contribute.
Nothing revolutionary here. Simply an attempt to Network a traditional
minority for mutial support. One might accuse the members of the Harn list of
similar "isolationism".. Larani knows we aren't on the RPG mainstream! :)
>I, like so many others, havn't seen your page. I don't have WWW access,
>so it doesn't look like I will. But, was declaring you had a page for
>female gamers not a bit off? Your .sig clearly shows you as a member of
>the femal gender, unless something horrible happened....
>
>Let me put it to you this way... If someone had a page for male gamers,
>would you really be interested in visiting it?
I am extremely male, and found the page interesting. Many of my game groups
have been 50%+ female, and I've seen some of the abuse women gamers recieve at
cons.
Let me put it this way. I have cancer, and have thought about setting up a
page for critically ill gamers. This would serve as a support network,
resource sharing point, and general info clearing house. Would I be upset if
a person without cancer/AIDS/Spinal Menegitas were to visit my site? No, I'd
hope they would learn something about the critically ill.
>Your title was a bit off. "Lise's gaming page" may not be too original,
>but it shows that *you* are a female gamer, without making the men (i.e.
>me) feeling unwelcome. With ideas for helping other women into the
>scene, what men can do to help (I've scared off every women I've talked
>to about RPG's) and commentry from both sides it would be cool.
what are you saying to them? Your attitude seems to be that "girly stuff" is
to be avoided by "real men", which could result in you projecting an image
that puts women off.
>As is, I think most men will avoid your page, which is a shame.
Why? Because they are threatned by the thought of female gamers? Because it
isn't yet another list of Big Fucking Guns? Please do not project you fear of
all things feminine onto me.
>BTW, how *do* you get women into your groups. My V:TM group is pretty
>small (4 of us), and all male. I need fresh input, and women *do* tend
>to be less "I'll bash him to a pulp" orientated. I'm trying to get a
>more political campaign, but the players want to go back to Rifts
><gulp!>.
Explain the cooperative storyteller aspect. Run games that consist of more
than combat sequences. Encourage *role-play* among all participants. Do not
drop a newcomer directly into an established campaign.
Just as an aside: The myths that women play "nurturing, healing types", and
are incapapble of true bloodthirstiness, are laid to rest by my lovely wife,
who plays the *meanest witch on the Isle of Harn.
She specializes in sex/fertility magic. Her favorite attack spell is one that
cause overwhelming, madding lust in the target(s). Picture hitting a male,
wearing heavy, METAL armor over his groin with this spell. She is also fond
of zapping guards near the pig sty.. stable.. kennels.. whatever...
# ------------------------------------------------- #
# Douglas E. Berry dbe...@hooked.net #
# Writer, Professional Driver, Traveller Guru #
# #
# "To treat your facts with imagination is one #
# thing. But to imagine your facts is another." #
# -John Burroughs #
# ------------------------------------------------- #
Bruce Baugh
> How does that manifest itself? Homophobic jokes that occur
>while your friends are in the stores or actual hostility directed at
>them? If the second, how the heck do the bigots know who to target?
>As far as I can tell, gays don't adhere to media stereotypes.
Mostly the former. But some of the latter - a t-shirt proclaiming
"Seattle Gay Pride Parade Organizing Committee", for instance, is a bit
of a giveaway. :-)
> I got contacted by a local gay group wanting to know if I
>ran a gay-friendly business, which puzzled me greatly: how would
>the subject of the customers' sexual orientation come up in a
>standard sale? It seems orthagonal to moving games. It might come
It does at that. Some people seem to call the willingness to do business
with folks and not care about orientation, my own favored status,
gay-friendly. Others seem to have other things in mind. So the response
from me would be a) a description of what I do and b) a question as to
what they mean.
Bruce Baugh <*> br...@aracnet.com <*> http://www.aracnet.com/~bruce
See my Web pages for
New science fiction by Steve Stirling and George Alec Effing er
Christlib, the mailing list for Christian and libertarian concerns
Daedalus Games, makers of Shadowfist and Feng Shui
Daryn Brown
In article a...@news3.digex.net, Lise Mendel <cata...@access.digex.net> () writes:
>
> Is it your contention that the "proper" thing to do is to grin and ignore it? To find another gaming group? It's a game, it's supp=
> osed to be fun. Many women just give up gaming when something like this happens, because it makes it un-fun. I think you'll agree =
> that's not productive.
>
> BTW: I tried to approach it with a little levity - that's why the logo is a "venus" symbol and the page is pink. The attitude is a=
> bit toungue in cheek. But there is an element of seriousness here.
>
> Thank you for including your age. I started gaming before you were born, and maybe things have changed more than I thought they have=
> in the last nineteen years. Please ask your friend if she's ever encountered any of this crap and LET ME KNOW!!!! One of the reas=
> ons I put the silly thing up is to see how much/little things have changed.
YOU GO GIRL!
I had a sexist macho type playin in my group, (I'm the GM) And he made it his point
to give the females pc's a hard time. Funny, he was the smallest and youngest guy
in the whole group (all the other guys are football, military types). He tried
intimidating one of the female pc's and ended up irritating the whole group.
Ends up the female pc in question is now the team lead and the macho pc's
character bit the dust. (I didn't even plan it.)
I've stated before that the guys in my group thank god for the female pc's in my
group, because they are some fast thinking folks. My buddies sister played and
we practically BEGGED her to come back.
And just incase you are wondering I'm 30 and have been GM'ing since I was 16.
DBIII
RobStoll
Well, I've been following the discussion so far, and I'd like to throw
something else into the stew and stir for a while.
How many men out there have tried cross gender role playing? I tend to
alternate genders when creating characters ("well, I played a woman in
that last game, I think I'll roll up a guy now"), and I've found that
playing female characters gives me insights into real world issues in ways
reading Evelyn Fox Keller, Sandra Harding, or Carol Gilligan don't. I
played my first female character way back around 1984 or so, around 8th or
9th grade. It was our Call of Cthulhu game, and my long surviving
character's luck had run out for the last time, so I had to roll up a new
character. I decided to make a plucky young reporter, a colleague of my
first character, who decided to investigate his precipitous mental decay
and mysterious disappearance. The other (all male) gamers in the group
reacted to me completely differently, because I was playing a female.
However, since the _player_ was male, they figured it was alright to level
the crudest sexist remarks at my character in only the way adolescent boys
can, just for laughs. It wasn't alright. I felt a bond with that character
- she was, after all, someone who was created by me, and my link to the
fictional world of the game. It hurt me deeply to have my character
treated that way, and to have the other guys expect me (as the male
player) to think it was funny. At the time, I didn't have the vocabulary
to express what my feelings were, so I remained silent.
I've played many female characters over the years since then, and, as I
and my gaming groups have matured, so has the sexism. It gets hidden more,
much less obvious than adolescent jeering. Physical stats are reduced, or,
assumed to be less effective than a male character with identical stats.
("You can't lift something that heavy." "Look at my character sheet."
"Woah. I guess you _can_.") You are constantly reminded of societal
inequities, like job availability and pay scale differences, in the
interest of preserving "historical accuracy". (This is a whole other
issue, which, if people want to address it, should probably start a new
thread. I don't want to get too far off topic, so I won't elaborate my
thoughts on this here.) And while I've never suffered the indignation of
having a female character get raped, I have heard stories of other
campaigns with that happening.
And, I've played in numerous games at cons where a male gamer is handed a
female character. Many men can play female characters proficiently, but
many make a disasterous display of it. They mince and pout and flutter
their eyes and concern themselves with acting "girly" rather than acting
in a realistic manner. I don't mind out-of-character kidding around during
a game, but it is distracting beyond the point which I can enjoy playing
when, say, the female detective is too concerned with her makeup to help
us figure out how to keep the 30 foot long tentacled thing from another
dimension from breaking into the house and killing us all.
Are there any other thoughts/insights along these lines? I'd be interested
in hearing them, 'cause I'm, to this day, one of the only men I know who
feels comfortable, nay enjoys, playing female characters. Any thoughts
from women who have played or seen women play male characters?
robert (sometimes roberta) :)
G Benage
In article <dc132-15059...@nefertum.trin.cam.ac.
uk>, dc...@cam.ac.uk (David Chart) writes:
>Surely that should be 'very boring cosmological history'. If
>anything interesting and cosmological had gone on in the
>neighbourhood, I doubt you'd have got 11 billion years or so
>of life.
Heh. I suppose it depends on your definition of interesting.
By mine, if nothing "interesting and cosmological" had
developed in the neighborhood, we'd have gotten no life,
no planet, no star. I guess I should have said, "There's a
bit of room for Poseidon's physical history to have been
significantly different from Earth's."
In any case, I'm glad we agree the game sounds interesting!
If you'd be interested in beta testing the game this summer,
we could use someone to keep us on our scientific toes...
Greg Benage
BioHazard Games
Daryn Brown
In article 66...@email.sps.mot.com, Stuart McAndrew <R23...@email.sps.mot.com> () writes:
> Let me put it to you this way... If someone had a page for male gamers,
> would you really be interested in visiting it?
>
> but it shows that *you* are a female gamer, without making the men (i.e.
> me) feeling unwelcome. With ideas for helping other women into the
> scene, what men can do to help (I've scared off every women I've talked
> to about RPG's) and commentry from both sides it would be cool.
>
>
> small (4 of us), and all male. I need fresh input, and women *do* tend
> to be less "I'll bash him to a pulp" orientated. I'm trying to get a
> more political campaign, but the players want to go back to Rifts
> <gulp!>.
Maybe thats the kind of thing you would find on her page. And how can you
attract female gamers to your game if you don't know what they want out of
roleplaying? Her page doesn't say "NO MEN ALLOWED".
DBIII
Lee Gold
Our gaming group is about 50/50 men and women. I've noticed
that women entering the game typically plunge right in with a
PC with a well-developed personality who seizes the first
opportunity to interact verbally with the others, while men
entering the game typically sit on the sidelines with a PC with
a well-developed skills set, waiting for some opportunity to
demonstrate their usefulness. One man (entering a campaign
that had gone on for several years) asked, "What sort of
character does the party need?" "They don't _need_ any sort
of charact er," I said. "Bring along the sort you feel
comfortable playing" -- and found him totally at a dead loss.
He spent two sessions with his PC present but never saying
anything when the group discussed what to do. (I run a
rolling-light game so there weren't any opportunities for him
to roll dice either.)
White Crow
I'm just asking for clarification, is this to be
rec.games.frp.misc.atheist.
bigot or biggest?
now .biggest would be kind of interesting....
Whytcrow (who thinks all this silly Christian vs Athiest vs Whoever is
kind of silly anyways. Let's just game for Brid's sake!)
--
"Manipulating your anticipation of your own manipulation."--EBN
Check out the best RPG I've ever seen: http://www.tai-gear.com/
"A thing doesn't have to change the world to be important."--Steve Jobs
Daryn Brown
In article d...@nntp.interaccess.com, b...@interaccess.com (Marshman) writes:
> Nope... this is completely different. If we had "Female Monday Night
> Football watchers" and "Male [same thing], then it would be ok.
> Watching football and gaming are different.
How is this different? You must run a very serious rpg. Last time I played
I had fun. Geez..
> Ok... if women are treated differently, how will identifying them as
> "female gamers" help the situation?
I think a page that has female gamers saying what they want out of roleplaying
will help GM's make the experience more enjoyable. GM's are like writers, they
want to tell a story. And most writers want to write stories that are as enjoyable
to as many people as possible. And I don't see female gamers going to cons and
saying "I'm a female gamer". But if you have a section of a page for all dwarf
players, or all magic users how do you identify them?
DBIII
Daryn Brown
In article E...@nh.ultranet.com, Archangel Beth <emc...@nh.ultranet.com> () writes:
>
> Me, I *like* checking out fem-gamers' web-pages! It's interesting.
> I might get into discussions about "Oh, I can't *belive* this
> sexist thing happened!" or "This guy I'm playing with is
> really great!" or "Any tips on doing a male character without
> confusing the guys?" Or maybe, "Gaming while pregnant -- what
> to do when you have contractions during the final battle."
I say let mushhead keep postin his crap. The more he posts, the more folks
will check lisa's cool site out. Cause the stuff mentioned above' Gaming
while pregnant" sounds cool as hell. Have like a female magic user teaching
her unborn magic while using magic to adventure... MAHHN.
Keep up the psycho-rants mooseman...
DBIII
Lee Gold
As far as I know my LANDS OF ADVENTURE is still the
only RPG in which movement is keyed to height directly
rather than all humans walking the same number of feet
per time unit. One (average height) gamer asked me why
I'd done this as we were walking to a party, then turned back
to let me catch up with him and said in surprise, "Oh, I
think I see why you might have noticed that sort of thing."
(I'm 4'10".)
On another occasion, a group of people challenged the idea
that my dwarf with crossbow could stand in the first
row of a party walking down a dungeon corridor, and have
the Tolkien-style tall elf behind him able to use another
missile weapon -- until my husband (5'8", somewhat shorter
than the elf, just as I'm somewhat taller than the dwarf)
stood up behind me as a demonstration.
I suspect there are things that gamers under 5' tall and that
gamers over 6' tall have to talk about that might end up enriching
everyone's gaming when they felt confident enough to say them.
I'd also like to note here that blaming minority people for getting
together as being "divisive" leads (logically) to denouncing people
for having a different religion than the majority. I'd
define divisiveness as people denouncing others for their
differences rather than merely occasionally choosing the
opportunity to get together with others like themselves. Using
that definition, guess who gets classified as divisive in the
recent discussion of whether it's appropriate for there to be
a female gamers web page.
Matthew Bassett (Ext. 6571)
>>>>> "A" == Anne B "Nonie" Rider <nri...@us.oracle.com> writes:
A> lg...@nyx10.cs.du.edu (Lee Gold) wrote:
>> I've heard accounts from girls/women of boys/men trying to
>> intimidate them into dropping out of gaming by gangraping their
>> female PCs -- or criticizing their male PCs as wimps if _they_
>> didn't happily participate in a gangrape.
A> I haven't seen those happen as a deliberate attempt to drive
A> the female gamers away, but I have seen them happen as part of
A> the male push-n-shove competitiveness, where you harrass the
A> tall guy for being tall and see how he takes it.
A> It's awfully easy for male gamers to see a female gamer as
A> *FEMALE*, and therefore not be able to see her as a real
A> person. You ever see that at family reunions, with your
A> embarrassing uncle, who when he's around gays can only think of
A> gay jokes, ...
[deletia]
A> Many male gamers running with a female gamer can only think of
A> "female" things (from a male point of view), like sex, rape,
A> pregnancy, and/or breast size. It's not a deliberate attempt to
A> harrass; it's half guys joking around and half sheer tunnel
A> vision.
My flabber is gasted! Are there gamers out there who really behave
like this? Presumably the offenders are those blokes whose sole
experience with women can be summarized by refering to the pile of
dirty tissues by their bed and the issue of Sport International's
swimwear catalogue underneath it.
Gaming is a social activity (as opposed to say, mass genocide which is
clearly not), i.e. one of the objects is to socialise and interact
with other people. This is what makes it different from Fantasy game
books and computer games. Behaviour that is not socially acceptible is
therefore, I would hope, considered unacceptible for gaming.
[walks out, muttering in disbelief]
--
_______________________________________________________________________
Matthew Bassett mail: mat...@te.rl.ac.uk
Minister for the Preservation Of The Truth.
"Where's the nearest information super layby?"
Lise Mendel
Archangel Beth <emc...@nh.ultranet.com> wrote:
<snip>
>Me, I *like* checking out fem-gamers' web-pages! It's interesting.
>I might get into discussions about "Oh, I can't *belive* this
>sexist thing happened!" or "This guy I'm playing with is
>really great!" or "Any tips on doing a male character without
>confusing the guys?" Or maybe, "Gaming while pregnant -- what
>to do when you have contractions during the final battle."
Actually, I can answer that one :-)
Say "ouch" and put your hand on your belly.
Look up and see a table full of concerned faces. Smile and say "relax,
it was just a contraction."
Watch the concern turn to panic. Laugh and say "It's just
Braxton-Hicks, not labor.... I swing at the guy."<roll dice...> :-)
Now trying to get information from a closed mouthed shopkeeper while the
baby wants to nurse is a bit harder... :-)
Lise Mendel
Mommy to Abigail (5/9/93) and Dorothy (10/19/95)
http://www.access.digex.net/~catalyst/
Lydia Leong
In article <4neksv$b...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>,
RobStoll <robs...@aol.com> wrote:
> [ about playing a female character ]
> ("You can't lift something that heavy." "Look at my character sheet."
> "Woah. I guess you _can_.") You are constantly reminded of societal
> inequities, like job availability and pay scale differences, in the
> interest of preserving "historical accuracy".
When you say "preserving historical accuracy", I assume that you are
referring to one of the systems which _do_ clearly have an interest
in historical accuracy or at least in re-creating the feel of a
specific genre: Ars Magica (medieval Europe), Pendragon (Arthurian
epic), Call of Cthulhu (particularly the 1890s and 1920s settings),
Castle Falkenstein (Steam Age), etc.
I am one of those gamers who _does_ believe in preserving historical
accuracy in games where it matters. I also believe in allowing players
to play exceptions -- but they're going to be _exceptions_, and their
characters will be treated as such. It is clearly a challenge to play
women in a lot of these historical settings, and perhaps some players
will find it frustrating. I believe that those players, however, should
either play males, or find a system which doesn't gender-discriminate.
Even in a modern game, I do not think it unreasonable to occasionally
have women treated like, well, women in the real world. Discrimination
still happens. It sucks. In RPGs at least you can usually do something
about it. I think it's a valid issue in, say, a Mage game, or other
serious modern-day RPG.
Now, of course, there are tasteful and reasonable ways to deal with
gender differences, and then there are evidently wholly gratuitous and
juvenile ways to treat gender differences. Escape Ventures' _Gatewar_
system, for example (the one with the chainmail bikini babe on the
front cover, released at last year's GenCon), is an excellent example
of a bunch of juveniles sitting around a table speculating about what
women must be like; if I recall correctly, this is the RPG which has
breast size included on its physical characteristics table. Other
companies which usually have better taste don't seem to be entirely
immune to this; for example, White Wolf's "Tribunals of Hermes:
Iberia" supplement for Ars Magica, includes an NPC whose major
point in life seems to be seduction (she has, a "Craft: Sex Toys"
skill, whee).
-- Lydia
Ennead
Anne B. "Nonie" Rider (nri...@hadron.us.oracle.com) wrote:
: Your point being? By and large, we ARE different from
: male gamers, for whatever reason of nature or nurture.
: If we choose to associate with each other, is it any
: particular business of yours? If we find the exceptions
: like Sarah Kahn intriguing, rather than invisible, does
: that cause you harm?
Oh, dear.
I wasn't even going to get *involved* in this thread, but I just
can't resist responding when I hear my name mentioned.
As I don't particularly care to join the debate in progress,
however, I thought I'd say something about (gasp!) Lise's web page itself.
I just popped over to take a look. There's not much there yet, but what
*is* there is in no way sexist, exclusionary, or PC (whatever the hell
*that* means). Honestly, I don't see what all the fuss is about.
No. That's not true. I *do* understand what all the fuss is
about. I just rather wish I didn't.
<sigh>
At any rate, Lise, I think what you've done so far shows promise,
and should I ever get around to my plan of putting some information about
my group's shared world up, I'd be interested in linking up with your
page. I see great value in a page of this sort, particularly as
reassurance to young would-be gamers that gaming really *isn't* an
all-male activity. Things have changed a bit since the late '70s,
admittedly, but I know that back when I started gaming, I had no idea that
there *were* other women or girls interested in the hobby. I wanted badly
to play for nearly three years without ever getting the chance, because in
my junior high school, boys and girls did not associate socially (unless
you were a jock, that is, but I was a geek, as were the boy gamers, and
the geeks simply Did Not Intermingle), and none of the girls were interested.
It was not until high school, when it became acceptable for boys to talk to
girls, that I got to finally play in a game. A page like this would have
been a very Good Thing for me to have had access to back then, and I'm sure
that there are young people now who could really use the reassurance you
offer them.
-- Sarah
PS -- Nonie, I had no *idea* that your given name was Anne.
I'd always vaguely imagined it to be Ramona, or some
similarly phonetically-related name. You learn
something new every year...
RobStoll
Lee told us a story:
> Our gaming group is about 50/50 men and women. I've noticed
> that women entering the game typically plunge right in with a
> PC with a well-developed personality who seizes the first
> opportunity to interact verbally with the others, while men
> entering the game typically sit on the sidelines with a PC with
> a well-developed skills set, waiting for some opportunity to
> demonstrate their usefulness. <it continues>
Hey, maybe you should send this story to the womens' gamer page, this
sounds like the sort of thing that is wanted over there. It sounds to me
like the guy has a bit of D'n'D-itis, in other words, you assemble a
"party" based on certain functions that need to be filled - we need a
cleric for healing, an elf and a magic user for ranged attacks, a fighter
or two for close combat, and a thief for foiling traps and picking locks.
Those are the "roles" we need, who's going to "play" them. Role-play, get
it? Anyway, I wonder if the women in your group don't play that way
because they are women, or because they started gaming after the hobby had
distanced itself a little more from wargaming.
robert
James Nicoll
In article <319A75...@3DO.com>,
Henry Perkins <Henry....@3DO.com> wrote:
>
>This is a reasonable test, but may be difficult to apply successfully as
>it requires one to assume the mental frame of an "opposite" type person.
>I have an easier test: Does the group include any characteristics which
>are not freely choosable? If so, the group is divisive, and is probably
>a bad idea. Thus "Illinois Gamers" is a fine group, because most anyone
>who wants to can choose to live in Illinois and play RPGs there. But
>"Canadian-Born Gamers Over 6' Tall" isn't freely choosable on 2 out of 3
>points, so it's a bad (divisive) group.
Heh. What about "Gamers in Wheelchars"? Should they not discuss
which stores are wheel-chair accessable, or would that be too exclusionary?
>On the topic at hand, I concur that RPGs are male-dominated, and for no
>good reason. Discussion about how to get rid of this bias is a good idea.
>Limiting that discussion to women doesn't help; it just avoids confronting
>the problem.
Who has suggested men be excluded from the discussion? Aside from
yourself just now, I mean?
James Nicoll
--
" The moral, if you're a scholar don't pick up beautiful babes on deserted
lanes at night. Real Moral, Chinese ghost stories have mostly been written
by scholars who have some pretty strange fantasies about women."
Brian David Phillips
Britt
arc...@PEAK.ORG (Chris Goodwin) writes:
>What about Kim Mohan and Tracy Hickman? (Were they ever freelancers?)
Kim's a guy...
- Britt
--
___ ___
/ \ tie...@agora.rdrop.com / \
\___/ tie...@indirect.com \___/
If you can read this, you are properly situated in relation to my vehicle.
Lisa Steele
Can someone email me the URL for this page? (That's what I get for not
checking groups regularly. <sigh>)
I spent a while contributing to the now defunct _Pallas Podium_, an APA
about women and RPGs. A good 2/3 of the contributors were female; I don't
know about the lurkers. The articles tended to be about the same as in
Alarums & Excursions and other APAs that I follow. But, there were some
great articles on historical models for female adventures, on
cross-gender roleplaying, on avoiding stereotypes in female adversaries,
etc.
Given the utter silence in many RPG source books on women's roles, on
female names, and the horrid examples of female NPCs, sample PCs, and
art gracing all too many RPGs (ok, mostly the 80s stuff), I can see a use
for a page talking about women and the hobby.
--Lisa
Jose Garcia
In article <4nbqlc$b...@newsbf02.news.aol.com>, gbe...@aol.com (G Benage) wrote:
> In article <DrEK2...@novice.uwaterloo.ca>, jam...@ece.uwaterloo.ca
> (James Nicoll) writes:
>
> > I'm sure you've thought of this, but are the oceans on your
> >world shallow or deep? Assuming the local ecology's energy and nutrient
> >system works like ours, the majority of sealife would be found where
> >both nutrients and energy are found: near nutrient rich upwellings or
> >on continental shelfs.
>
> Well, Jeff Barber is the resident marine biologist and all-around science
> guru at BioHazard, but I'll answer the question as best I can. The simple
> answer is "yes, the oceans are both shallow and deep." Posedion's
> surface is more than 96% ocean, but that leaves room for countless
> volcanic archipelagos scattered across the planet. Poseidon's ecology
> is far more diverse than Earth's and has evolved more than three times
> as long as life on Earth. Jeff is detailing a number of cool ecozones
> within which this diverse biota can be encountered: the volcanic islands,
> coral atolls, tectonic ridges and trenches, abyssal plains, sargasso
> flats,
> strata caverns, and even a volcanic polar oasis. And a lot more.
Cool, save me a copy if you've got advance versions at Gencon or at
GAMA next year I'm up for some righteous product trading.
>
> Indeed, as we speak, Jeff is writing a brief introduction to oceanography
> that is intended to dispel Hollywood's myths about the oceans and what
Hey, and we've gone to all this trouble in reinforcing Hollywood's
myths in Feng Shui.
Jose Garcia
Co-Designer of Shadowfist, Best Card Game of '95 according to:
Scrye Readership Awards, Pinnacle Awards, Ventura Magazine. Currently up for the Origins Award.
Shadowfist Web Page http://www.aracnet.com/~bruce/daedalus/index.html
Carl D. Cravens
On Wed, 15 May 1996 12:16:47 +0100, Andrew Rilstone <and...@aslan.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>It's her web page. She has things to say that she thinks girlies will be
>mainly interested in. How is that politically correct.
>
>Silly man.
Darn comprehensionally-challenged Brits! When will you ever figure
Political Correctness out? You can't apply logic to it... if you could,
that wouldn't be PC. (You see, logic-challenged individuals, whose
worth is no greater or lesser for being such, wouldn't be able to figure
it out and that would be unfair.)
I would insert a smiley here, but that would be unfair to the
humor-challenged, who don't get it. (But this has no bearing on their
worth to society.) (This is, of course, not to give weight to the
concept that "society" is a good or bad thing, but that it simply is,
and some people think it is a good thing, and we must respect their
opinions.) (Of course, this isn't to pass judgement on the validity of
the concepts of "good" or "bad". But I think that should go without
saying, though it needs to be said for those comprehensionlly-challenged
who might not understand (that's you, Andrew).) (Not that a minimal
positive level of comprehension is a bad thing, mind you.)
--
Carl (rave...@southwind.net)
* REALITY.SYS Corrupted: Re-boot universe? (Y/N/Q)
Jordan H. Orzoff
> arc...@PEAK.ORG (Chris Goodwin) writes:
>
> >What about Kim Mohan and Tracy Hickman? (Were they ever freelancers?)
>
> Kim's a guy...
>
And so is Tracy. Next?
--
Jordan H. Orzoff, M.A.
orzo...@gold.tc.umn.edu
Department of Psychology
University of Minnesota
Eric E Tolle
In <4nd3k5$i...@news3.digex.net> Lise Mendel <cata...@access.digex.net> writes:
>>
>>Ok... if women are treated differently, how will identifying them as
>>"female gamers" help the situation?
>a space for female gamers. I'm not _excluding_ guys, but I'm not aiming
>anything directly at them, either.
Frankly, my attitude toward this whole fracis is: "if it encourages
more women to game, then wonderful, happiness, more power to you."
the sad thing is, the sex-ratio among gamers is a postive feedback
cycle, where the overwhelming ratio of men to women tends to promote
more sevmbalance...
So, to get more women into gameing, action has to be taken, in a positive
manner. This looks like a good thing to me...
>reasons I've mentioned in my page, I think it's more effective if women
>recruit other women than if it's purely men recruting women.
Interesting idea- it would seem to avoid the "weirdo looking for a
date" factor. of course I've been lucky to game in groups with a
reletively high female-male ratio.
>I do mention sexual harassment in the page. I consider it
>'acknowledging reality'. It has happened. It does happen.
Some of the stories I've heard...like the gamer who justified
gang-raping a female gamer's character "because she failed her
stealth roll". Of course he had the 'saving grace of being an
equal-oportunity sadist- one of the reasons I don't play with him.
>Of the correspondance I've gotten on harassment, I've heard a lot of
>"I've never seen it, and if I did I'd stop it" from men, a lot of
I tend to think of it as a maturity issue myself- both agewise and
emotionally. As I game with an older crowd, it's never really been a
problem in the group.
Anyways, good luck with it- I hope it does help open up RPGing to
more women...
Eric Tolle unde...@mcl.ucsb.edu
"An' then Chi...@little.com, he come scramblin outta the terminal room
screaming "The system's crashing! The system's crashing!"
-Uncle RAMus, 'Tales for Cyberpsychotic Children'
RobStoll
Lydia and I bantered back and forth:
> > ("You can't lift something that heavy." "Look at my character sheet."
> > "Woah. I guess you _can_.") You are constantly reminded of societal
> > inequities, like job availability and pay scale differences, in the
> > interest of preserving "historical accuracy".
>
> When you say "preserving historical accuracy", I assume that you are
> referring to one of the systems which _do_ clearly have an interest
> in historical accuracy or at least in re-creating the feel of a
> specific genre: Ars Magica (medieval Europe), Pendragon (Arthurian
> epic), Call of Cthulhu (particularly the 1890s and 1920s settings),
> Castle Falkenstein (Steam Age), etc.
Careful, now. I did acknowledge that I'd open a can of worms with that
statement, and I think a new thread should be started on this subject.
However, I'll say that such sexism carries over into purely fantasy games,
that are supposedly loosely based on medieval Europe, but with magic and
fantastic critters running around. A fantasy world need not reflect real
world sexism, but it frequently does. It seems a bit distracting that, all
too often, the real consequences of accessible magic and the like are not
factored into sociological trends.
I also like to preserve historical accuracy (I've run Call of Cthulhu) in
games, but I agree that there are tactful ways to do it. If you look at
games like Pendragon, you see that there's a distinct advantage to playing
male characters, because the game sets out to preserve the historical and
literary basis on which the game rests (although, the authors
intentionally address issues related to female characters, and try to
offer alternatives). History isn't always pretty, or what we want things
to be like, but that's how it was, and I don't shy away from it. Besides,
in most RPGs, you play a character who is better than most people around
him or her - whatever the world might be like, your character is better
than most - why not have a female doctor or a black professor of
antiquities in Call of Cthulhu? They would have been rare for the time,
but so are people who travel to R'lyeh to save the world.
robert
Steve Gilham
RobStoll (robs...@aol.com) wrote:
> Well, I've been following the discussion so far, and I'd like to throw
> something else into the stew and stir for a while.
> How many men out there have tried cross gender role playing? I tend to
It's very much my default : the local group has had a strong tradition
of "strong female character" play, and I tend to find myself more
sympathetic to female characters, rather than slumping towards playing
an idealised or stylised version of myself, which all of my male
characters have been.
In some ways, this is quite surprising - the original gaming group,
nearly 20 years ago, was composed of students at a university
(Cambridge) where perhaps one undergraduate in five was a woman, and
where the pernicious effects of single-sex education meant than many
of the players had had no real social contact with similar age members
of the opposite sex for a significant fraction of their lifetime. But
the ethos seemed to be one of equality by assumption (indeed the group
ended up, before graduation, being composed of couples, each of whom
gamed for its own sake); and the first campaigns I either ran or
played in were such that the powerful NPCs were almost exclusively
women.
Indeed, the only vaguely sexist mechanics used briefly (a variant on
the system in an early Dragon) to roll female STR lower and CHA higher
tended only to make the most powerful mages female (as the magic
system used was such that CHA fed into ability at elemental and
invocational magic), while most males opted for fighter.
The habit has become so ingrained that in the last fantasy campaign
run locally, my wife - the only woman in the current line-up - felt
compelled to run male characters, just to keep the PCs roughly equally
distributed in gender.
[snip]
> I've played many female characters over the years since then, and, as I
> and my gaming groups have matured, so has the sexism. It gets hidden more,
> much less obvious than adolescent jeering. Physical stats are reduced, or,
> assumed to be less effective than a male character with identical stats.
> ("You can't lift something that heavy." "Look at my character sheet."
> "Woah. I guess you _can_.") You are constantly reminded of societal
> inequities, like job availability and pay scale differences, in the
> interest of preserving "historical accuracy". (This is a whole other
I don't suppose they would have coped with a character like Yrsa
Greybear, an awesomely tough Uruk-Hai warrior, whose main motivation
in adventuring was that all these wimpy humans and elves needed a
properly motherly Uruk-Hai to look after them, and keep them safe when
they went off to do dangerous things. (Orcish society in that game was
modelled roughly on Gloranthan Trolls.)
> issue, which, if people want to address it, should probably start a new
> thread. I don't want to get too far off topic, so I won't elaborate my
> thoughts on this here.) And while I've never suffered the indignation of
> having a female character get raped, I have heard stories of other
> campaigns with that happening.
Not something that has heppened in games I've been in; but a thought
has just occurred to me based on the real-world example of IIRC,
hyaenas (if not, it's probably Cape hunting dogs), where females tend
to dominate packs, but, shall we say, would appear at first casual
glance to be male, to wonder if the same might be true of those
Uruk-Hai, which would enable a turning of the tables, so to speak.
-- Personal mail to st...@windsong.demon.co.uk (for which PGP is preferred) --
Steve Gilham |GDS Ltd.,Wellington Ho. |My opinions, not those of GDS
Software Specialist|East Road, Cambridge |Corporation or its affiliates.
steveg@ |CB1 1BH, UK |---------------------------------
uk.gdscorp.com |Tel:(44)1223-300111x2904|Check out http://www.lpf.org/
Andrew A. Apold
Andrew looked up from his commemorative LSH/LSV chess set when he heard someone using James Nicoll's account
say:
>
>In article <4nb946$2pk...@marid.friedlander-bey.org>,
>Bruce Baugh <br...@aracnet.com> wrote:
>
> snip
>
>> More
>>common, I think, is the knee-jerk homophobia I've run into in game
>>stores, which sometimes makes it difficult to comfortably invite gay
>>friends to go check out new releases with me.
>
> How does that manifest itself? Homophobic jokes that occur
>while your friends are in the stores or actual hostility directed at
>them? If the second, how the heck do the bigots know who to target?
>As far as I can tell, gays don't adhere to media stereotypes.
>
>ran a gay-friendly business, which puzzled me greatly: how would
>the subject of the customers' sexual orientation come up in a
>standard sale? It seems orthagonal to moving games. It might come
>private folk they are, there'd have to be some degree of friendliness
>there before it got mentioned.
You ever see the random insanity chart on the first version of
the Palladium Fantasy RPG? One of the rolls was homosexuality,
or, as the table noted, become normal if already homosexual.
Never got the details, but some time after that a friend of mine
bought the book and his had a sticker over this result on the table,
which replaced it with "Xenophobia". Later printings eliminated this
entirely (though it still had at least one error left uncorrected
elsewhere in the book). I see they just came out with a 2nd edition...
Andrew Apold (mor...@magg.net)
/**********************************************/
/ C/C++, Legion, Blue Oyster Cult, Pink Floyd /
/ Hawkwind, Amtgard, Vikings, and S.A. Spurs /
/**********************************************/
"I was corrupt BEFORE I had power!"
-Random
Andrew A. Apold
Andrew looked up from his commemorative LSH/LSV chess set when he heard someone using Lise Mendel's account
say:
>
>Archangel Beth <emc...@nh.ultranet.com> wrote:
><snip>
>>Me, I *like* checking out fem-gamers' web-pages! It's interesting.
>>I might get into discussions about "Oh, I can't *belive* this
>>sexist thing happened!" or "This guy I'm playing with is
>>really great!" or "Any tips on doing a male character without
>>confusing the guys?" Or maybe, "Gaming while pregnant -- what
>>to do when you have contractions during the final battle."
>
>Actually, I can answer that one :-)
>
>Say "ouch" and put your hand on your belly.
>
>Look up and see a table full of concerned faces. Smile and say "relax,
>it was just a contraction."
>Watch the concern turn to panic. Laugh and say "It's just
>Braxton-Hicks, not labor.... I swing at the guy."<roll dice...> :-)
>
>Now trying to get information from a closed mouthed shopkeeper while the
>baby wants to nurse is a bit harder... :-)
I suppose this wouldn't be a good time to mention the Midwifery spell list
from Rolemaster....
--
Mary K. Kuhner
In article <4nfq35$j...@netnews.upenn.edu> lwl@graphics (Lydia Leong) writes:
>Even in a modern game, I do not think it unreasonable to occasionally
>have women treated like, well, women in the real world. Discrimination
>still happens. It sucks. In RPGs at least you can usually do something
>about it. I think it's a valid issue in, say, a Mage game, or other
>serious modern-day RPG.
The thing that I would like to avoid is having gender-based
discrimination seen as much more gameworthy than other forms. I am
white and married to an Asian, and my observation is that being Asian
causes him approximately as much trouble as being female causes me (not
a whole lot, locally, but there are occasional bumps). I would be
annoyed to be in a modern-day game where African and Asian characters
got along just fine in all US contexts, but female characters were
constantly being harrassed, put down, and discriminated against.
I'd also be annoyed to be in a game where the corresponding prejudices
against men (in child custody, for example) did not appear when they
logically ought to. (I'm not saying the GM should deliberately bring
them up, but if the situation arises....)
Some groups seem to regard female characters as comic relief: they are
there to amuse the group with their troubles, not as full characters in
their own right. (Characters of "small" races such as halflings
sometimes encounter the same reaction.) I find this intensely
exasperating, and I've quit groups over it. Note that this is not a
player-gender problem, it's a character-gender problem: my husband,
playing female PCs, finds it just as annoying. And the only all-female
playing group I've been in had this problem in spades, to the point
where one player would only do male characters.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@genetics.washington.edu
Irina Rempt
Archangel Beth (emc...@nh.ultranet.com) wrote:
>"Any tips on doing a male character without
> confusing the guys?"
I'd sure like to know *that* - it's exactly the reason that I stopped trying
to play male characters (except when gaming with only women which rarely
happens)
> Or maybe, "Gaming while pregnant -- what
> to do when you have contractions during the final battle."
That actually happened to me (well, not during the *final* battle, but
during an important battle anyway). We lost. Not *because* of the
contractions, and my daughter wasn't born until two weeks later. She made
her gaming debut when she was 11 days old, being rescued from a burning
house :-)
Irina
(haven't seen Lise's page yet, we're strictly UUCP at the moment. but seems
like a good idea to me - as long as it's for *female* not *feminist* gamers)
--
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl
** Things our parents said that we swore we'd never say to our kids **
** No. 3: "What did Mummy say?" **
Lise Mendel
mor...@magg.net (Andrew A. Apold) wrote:
>You ever see the random insanity chart on the first version of
>the Palladium Fantasy RPG? One of the rolls was homosexuality,
>or, as the table noted, become normal if already homosexual.
>
>Never got the details, but some time after that a friend of mine
>bought the book and his had a sticker over this result on the table,
>which replaced it with "Xenophobia". Later printings eliminated this
>entirely (though it still had at least one error left uncorrected
>elsewhere in the book). I see they just came out with a 2nd edition...
>
>
One of the Central Casting books by Paul Jacquays has a lengthy rant
against homosexuality in it. I found his attitude pretty offensive, and
I'm not even gay. :-)
Irina Rempt
RobStoll (robs...@aol.com) wrote:
[zap]
[and I've changed the subject to attract people who might like to join
in on this and are tired of the other thread]
> Are there any other thoughts/insights along these lines? I'd be interested
> in hearing them, 'cause I'm, to this day, one of the only men I know who
> feels comfortable, nay enjoys, playing female characters. Any thoughts
> from women who have played or seen women play male characters?
My husband plays women all the time; it started when one of his male
characters had an accidental magical sex change and he realized he
actually preferred it that way. His female characters are totally
convincing as women. I don't know what makes it so. If I did, I wouldn't
have so much difficulty playing male characters - other players still
tend to see me as a woman, whereas they don't see my husband's (female)
character as a man. Even (or especially) if I overplay 'traditionally
male' characteristics I'm seen as a tomboy rather than a male.
It's not that I *mind* playing women, gender is one of the components
of a character that I don't much care about so I'm more comfortable if
I don't have to take the trouble to roleplay it, but sometimes I'd like
to have twice the choice. And then there's the game we had in a world
where women who don't stay indoors all the time are probably whores...
(solved that problem by playing a woman dressed up as a man, which
transferred my problem to my character).
On a side note: our gaming group are all such good friends, and so mature
(by now :-), that I've never been sexually harassed, except by NPCs where
it was part of the game. It also happened to the other female characters
(both of them played by men).
Irina
Irina Rempt
> >What about Kim Mohan and Tracy Hickman? (Were they ever freelancers?)
> Kim's a guy...
And so is Tracy.
Yes, that surprised me too when I first heard it.
Irina
--
ir...@rempt.xs4all.nl
** Things our parents said that we swore we'd never say to our kids **
** No. 5: "Look with your eyes, not with your hands" **
OmegaOdd
G Benage wrote:
>
> In article <Dr19r...@ritz.mordor.com>, ma...@ritz.mordor.com
> (matth) writes:
>
> >2. A science fiction game that combines these features:
> > 1. Cyberpunk technology while making the attitude that comes with
> > it optional.
>
> Keep an eye out for Blue Planet, a new hard science-fiction RPG from
> BioHazard Games. The human race has entered a new phase of
> "artificial evolution" with the development of cybernetic technology and
> sophisticated genetic engineering.
>
> The setting is definitely a "dark future" one: a genetically engineered
> virus ravaged the Earth's agricultural crops and led to a three decade-
> long Blight during which billions of people died and the social,
> political,
> economic, and ecological stability of the planet was devastated. However,
> the focus of the setting is not Earth, but the single habitable world that
> humanity has successfully colonized in another star system--the
> waterworld, Poseidon. The game's theme is therefore not the typical
> "urban-punk" thing you get in the cyber-genre. Instead, it centers on
> humanity's first encounter with a truly alien and mysterious world.
>
> > 2. Aliens, and a way to make them nonhuman or having no features
> > of known earth creatures.
>
> I think you're gonna like some of the surprises hidden below Poseidon's
> surface... <grin>
>
> >5. Any game with a generic combat system that does not depend on
> >rounds but a single stream of combat.
>
> We've retained "Action Rounds" as an effective way of organizing book-
> keeping and managing the "bandwidth" problem for GMs. However,
> character actions within this system aren't reduced to the staccato, stop-
> action "I go, you go" sequence of traditional RPG mechanics. Combat is
> a lot more flowing, uncertain, and chaotic...in short, it's more
> realistic,
> exciting, and fun!
>
> I love to talk about Blue Planet, but I'd better give it a rest before I'm
> accused of spamming the newsgroup! ;-) Once we get the Web page up
> and running, we'll have lots of cool Blue Planet stuff available, like
> character
> profiles, background info, short fiction, artwork and graphics, and a lot
> more. We're giving ourselves until January 1, 1997 to put the game on
> the shelves. We'll do everything we can to get BP out this fall, but
> we're
> going to make sure it's *perfect* before we ask you to buy it.
>
> Good Gaming,
>
> Greg Benage
> BioHazard Games
Looking forward to checking it out. Best of luck...
Peace,
Dan,
OmegaOdd